


Repentance

by constantlyinflux



Category: Sicario (Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, be warned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:15:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26372542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/constantlyinflux/pseuds/constantlyinflux
Summary: Alejandro comes home to find what's left of his wife and daughter.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	Repentance

_And you, my father, there on the sad height,_  
_Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray._  
_Do not go gentle into that good night._  
_Rage, rage against the dying of the light._

  
The notebook is turquoise, hardcover with golden inlays, a tendril motif covering the whole front and back, the reproduction of a binding from a book dating back to 1688. Closed, the cut edges depict the same floral theme as the cover. The spine is corded, imitating the backs of antique books. He’d smoothed his fingers over it, smiling at the thought of her face when she’d see it. There are two brass-coloured clasps at the side, snapping shut easily. The pages inside are a light beige with pale writing lines. The way the paper fibres lined up during manufacture becomes visible with the right angle of light, parallel stripes left to right, palpable against his fingertips. A red ribbon is hidden inside, to mark the page. Thick brown cardboard used for the endpapers and half-title, a warm brown, like wood in sunlight or the beach at dusk. There is a folded pocket inside the back, made of the same material, and he already knows exactly what she’ll use it for. Feathers, photos, pressed leaves, a smoothed candy wrapper as a memory of her favourite holiday trip.

It’s heavy, larger than his palm, clad with leather and pliant to the touch. It wasn’t cheap and Elena will probably chide him for using it as a bribe for breaking his promise to be early today. Again. And maybe it is. But he couldn’t walk away when he hurried past the bookstore across the street. He saw it and knew she’d love it. He can picture exactly how her face will light up, how her hands will smooth over the surface, how she’ll hold it at just the right angle, the warm light of the living room catching onto the golden lines. He knows how she’ll squeal, how she’ll wrap her arms around him tightly, book in hands, big grin hidden in the crook of his neck. He used to know how she smelled. Chocolate and earthy grass and that faint tinge of sweet strawberry shampoo. He can’t conjure that mixture up again now, an olfactory memory long lost in ashes and tears.

The book is lying on the passenger seat. He had thought about buying flowers for Elena, but he knew she’d easily see through that cheap try of an excuse, take it as an insult to her integrity. So he had ordered takeout at Los Arcos, Steak and Chilpachole for them, pasta and ice cream for Sofia. That is a bribe, yes, he’ll happily take that, but he’s starving, having lived off coffee and a granola bar that day.

It’s already Thursday, which means he only has to power through Friday, finish everything on the weekend, try to get at least a couple of hours sleep Sunday night. The hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, 2 p.m., so he needs to catch his plane to Juárez on Monday. Tuesday will probably take all day, but if they got lucky, that would be it and he’d have the rest of the week for himself. For his family. He knows the girls are looking forward to this as much as he does.

He’d fetch Sofia from school, go to the zoo, the park, eat ice cream every day—he left out that part for his wife, though. And during the day, with their daughter in school, he’d just sit there with Elena, linger on the couch or outside in the garden. They would order food, watch movies, he’d read to her. They would touch and explore. He would kiss her, hold her, watch her. And he would make love to her, slowly, in the light of day, no need for haste or quiet hushes at night. They would have endless hours, the world lying at their feet, all clocks banished from this perfect, infinite moment. And after that, they would talk and talk and talk, and he would never once mention his cases.

He’d make up for the past months. He’d promised.

It’s already chilly outside, but the car traps the heat of the day like an oven. He strips off the already loosened tie and drapes it over the presents on the passenger seat—bagged styrofoam boxes, the notebook wrapped in brown paper—then unbuttons the top of his shirt and rolls down the window. Cool night air sweeps over his skin and he just wants to close his eyes for a second but fears he’d fall asleep behind the wheel. He’s so fucking tired.

Rolling his shoulders, he can feel all the tension there. All he wants is to get rid of his clothes, take a long hot shower, get some food into his system, then tuck his daughter in and fall asleep with his wife in his arms, but he knows that last part won’t be an option. He knows he needs to excuse himself to his room after kissing Sofia goodnight. He knows how much he still needs to cover for the next day. He knows how Elena will look at him.

He yawns, scrubbing a hand over his face to fight the sweet pull of sleep. He’s worked his ass off for the past months and he knows the price he pays for this is not only the neglect of his body. But they are hitting it big this time. He’s had a couple of good runs through the years, had stepped in early, got all the tough cases dumped on him the state didn’t expect to win anyway and managed to plod through most of them. Pretty early on, he’s left a trail of convictions that couldn’t be ignored and that only secured him better cases. Higher gambling. By that time, he was already known as someone who’d push his luck relentlessly.

But now, now they really got them by the balls. There’s a picture in his head, made up of all the cases he’s filed since he left law school an eternity away. A mosaic, in a sense, that only recently started to come together as a picture. He’d fished in the dark for so long, trying to get a hold of everything that could lead him to the big boss. Despite all his wins, for the better part of his professional life he had felt like he was only running into walls, but now all those smaller wins start to pay off. The mosaic parts are coming together. Now they got a direct line to the kingpin, and that line is tucked neatly into the collar of Hector Muñoz.

Hector’s not a big fish, anything but, but he’s the brother-in-law of Fausto Alarcón who has been rising through the ranks of the Sonora cartel like bubbles in a glass of water. And Hector owes him big time. Heavily indebted with gambling and stock trading, he’s swallowing everything Alarcón throws at him and that includes realty, realty used for cocaine production and trade to the US.

So if they get to Hector Muñoz, they get to Alarcón and that could bring in one of the best high-stakes games at the drug cartel poker table for ages. Getting access to Alarcón’s trades would open up a plethora of possibilities, leverage to bear on Carlos Reyes. And he’s hellbent on making that happen.

But first, he needs to get through Tuesday and the amount of work that still needs to be done could not possibly be crammed into the four remaining days even if he forfeited sleep completely. So he already knows what he can and can’t do over the weekend. He’s brought his assistant in line with what’s realistically attainable and went all out with everybody who may or may not owe him a favour. What he can’t do, he needs to walk on pure instinct alone.

But if he reels this last thing in on Tuesday, he _will_ take time off. For his family’s sake. And for his own sake, too.

But the biggest plans are made on a whim and while he’s sitting in his car, pulling the BMW into the tight turn at the long slope of the hill leading up to his house, he can’t see the wall coming up ahead with flaring lights, ready to smash him and everything he’s ever known to hold true into a zillion pieces so small there would remain nothing but stardust.

It’s a distinct memory, etched into his retina, the blue pulsation of the night sky above the hill. When he goes to bed, that image comes easily like it’s always just waiting for him to close his eyes, the rhythm of _blue-dark-blue-dark-blue-dark_ like a heartbeat thrown against the inside of his eyelids with an old, slightly cracky overhead projector.

That first beat of _dark-blue-dark_ kicks his brain into overdrive. He knows this, knows what this is. He has seen it so many times, each scenario linked to cases, to dead people, to blood. Acutely orchestrated violence to freeze motion, pause life so that the cartels would not get hurt where they don’t want to be hurt. A message, laid out in your house, your garden, on the street, in public places, whatever suits the drama best. They have an endless repertoire of ways to frame and light and tell the story but the tropes are always the same.

He has seen enough crime scenes in the past ten years to know every angle of the play. There’s one and only one outcome to this prelude and he knows exactly what he’ll find on the top of that hill.

But this is only the rational part of his brain kicking into work mode and he barely even realises it, surging emotions clogging up every functioning nerve path trying to get through to him with important messages. In the three seconds it takes him to understand what he’s seeing, _dark-blue-dark_ , he relapses into the primal form inherent to every human being and it knows nothing but dread.

He remembers every second up until a certain point, how he felt the bottom of his stomach drop out, bile rising at the back of his throat, the way his heart started hammering in his chest, pulse quickening, pounding in his head, rushing blood through his body, fight-or-flight reflexes in full overdrive.

He starts reciting the words in his head.

_It’s not them. It’s not them. It’s not them._

But he knows it is.

By the time he reaches the top of the hill, his hands have started shaking so bad he’s barely able to park the car. Pulling up along a police vehicle on the off side of the road, he just leaves the car there, completely askew in violation of any parking rules and common sense.

He’s sitting there for a full ten seconds, looking at the police cars parked around the front of his house in orchestrated chaos. The cacophony of blue and red lending a strobe-like effect to the row of houses and lawns, singling out fences and trees against the dark with a pulsing rhythm. Shadows of people are moving through light and darkness on the walkway and among the cars, in his front garden, on the steps to his door. They are like ghosts, formless, something slipping in from another plane of existence. Or maybe he is the ghost. He certainly feels like he doesn’t belong.

He pushes the door open and gets out of the car, realising he can’t feel his legs anymore. He’s standing up, straightening on limbs that seem to be nothing more than phantom pain, like walking on a glass bridge when your feet say _yes_ but your brain screams _NO_. They do carry him, though, his missing limbs, through the first row of parked police vehicles, the outer perimeter set up against the dark and against neighbours standing in doorways and behind lit windows. The impact of his feet on the street passed on via bones and muscles and sinews to the rest of his body as pure physical shock is the only proof there is still something between the tarmac and the raw nerve that is his heart.

His hands are cold. He can’t feel his fingertips anymore, brushing them against each other as he wades through midnight blue fronts of alloy. All the heat seems to bubble up into his head. It feels like a fever, cold sweat breaking out on his skin, heat radiating off his neck against the chill of the night. He swallows and feels like he’s suffocating. His hand comes up to loosen his tie only to find it already gone, buttons open. Everything just feels _too fucking tight_.

People start noticing him when his foot hits the curb. They are pointing at him, insecure glances over to those more qualified. The armada of black uniforms on the sidewalk stirs around him like a beehive invaded by a wasp. _You don’t belong here._

“Sir? Sir, you can’t walk here. This is a crime scene.”

A young police officer starts walking towards him with an outstretched hand.

“That’s my house.”

His simple answer. Without stopping, he wills his legs to move up to the stairs, intrinsically curious if he can lift his feet high enough to make it up the first step.

There is some form of recognition on the young man’s face. Mouth open in silent shock, he watches him walk past before a sense of duty kicks in. He grabs the radio stuck to his chest and pulls it up to his mouth.

“Ah, Javier? There’s… we got the husband here.”

He starts waving frantically to other officers in his perimeter while he keeps on talking through the radio. More people notice, attention zeroing in on the man in the dark suit walking up to the front door. They start shifting closer, like a semi-circle of dark cotton wafting around dark linen, almost as if trying to isolate that inadequate splash of grandeur against the scene.

He’s made it three of the five steps, burgundy leather on white stucco, when another officer steps into his space, hands held up, a blatant imitation of his younger version.

“Sir, you can’t—“

“No no, it’s okay.”

Another man standing in the doorway. His doorway. Slightly older. Guy in charge. He waves off the other officer, then looks at him with what is supposed to be an accommodating expression on his face.

“Mr. Gillick?”

But the fact that this man, this stranger, is standing in his doorway, on his steps, has been coming out of his house, has been _in_ his house along with the flock of strangers he can see bustling about in the hallway behind him, the fact that this man prevents him from getting into his home makes him snap.

He brushes past him so quickly, the older man can barely react, stepping aside on instinct.

“Mr. Gillick!”

But he’s already inside.

“Mr. Gillick, you can’t—”

People start looking up, but all he can see is his home, shattered pieces peeking out between all those people in dark uniforms and white overalls, his home and that thing that has invaded it. It’s crawling all over the floor, splattered against the wall of Elena’s studio, door wide open. Red blood so bright it seems fake. Blood on the wall, blood on the edge of the table, blood on the floor. A trail of blood leading through the hallway, drips on the hardwood, streaks along the wall. He looks down, half of his right shoe in a puddle by his feet. It sticks as he pulls back. He feels lightheaded. First, there’s nothing really below his eyes except for tingling fingertips. Then his skin starts to crawl.

Someone grabs his arm and like an impulse, it sets him in motion again, leaving the hand behind.

“Sir, please.”

He’s moving through the hallway looking left and right, wide-eyed like a kid in a Christmas store. Everything rushes through to him without barriers filtering what is important and what isn’t. The door to his study wide open. Paper on the floor like heaps in a snow globe. Glass shards among them like glitter fragments. Books piling into the frame like a surge. Curtains drawn. Floor lamp on the ground like a felled tree. All the drawers of his desk have been pulled out. The book he’d forgotten this morning still there on the chair.

All the other doors are closed.

People watch him from the living room at the end of the hallway, framed by the double door. There’s a glaring smear of blood on the door frame. A hand trying to hold tight. He walks towards it, trying not to step into the red specks and streaks on the floor. It’s like he’s getting closer to a moving painting, figures in black and white moving in and out of frame, like sleepwalkers, turning to him, pausing.

There’s uncertainty in their eyes, white overalls, white gloves and black rubber shoes offering only a fragile protection against what they see coming through the hallway. They step back when he comes close and enters the painting through the double doors, as if he’d contaminate them with his dread.

The black uniforms don’t echo that fear, officers stepping into his way, between him and what had been a room full of joy and sunlight, poetry in smiles and soft touches. So many people in this room. He catches glimpses of destruction between black and white, more books on the floor, pillows a mess, an upturned chair. Yellow evidence markers. Yellow flowers, a shattered vase. Red fingerprints on the table, the couch. A red stain where he liked to sit on the left side.

There are more people on the floating spiral stairs leading up to the second floor, and another book lying on the uppermost step he can see, upturned like a dead animal, pages open only for the polished wood to see. It bothers him how a couple of the pages are folded inwards.

“Mr. Gillick, I need you to look at me now.”

The voice is invading the silence because everyone had stopped talking the moment he stepped into the room. And what’s with those outstretched hands, like he’s a wild animal they need to comfort, when clearly the beast has already been here and is long gone. Nothing left to fear. Just carnage and death. And death won’t kill you. It’s worse.

“I want you to come outside with me again. Make sure you understand what is happening here.”

They don’t seem to realise, he understands very well what’s happening here. He knows exactly what happened here. He has known from the moment he saw the pulsing blue night sky above his house like a flickering halo, a marker pointing to where his road ended, a real-life navigation system. This is it. End of the line. Terminus. Book out and leave.

He has seen it, all of it, countless times. Different ways to every cartel, different messages, paintings ranging from impressionist to abstract, but they all paint with the same colours. Broken things, broken bodies, red blood. He has seen it so many times he starts picturing all this in a photo, stepping back from three-dimensional space to look at the two-dimensional representation, glaring flashbulbs highlighting everything in a vulgar way, too bright for life. Just another one in an endless row of photographs in files sorting death by alphabet.

“Mr. Gillick.”

It’s as if they think he doesn’t know his own name, as if they want to make sure he remembers. It’s a grounding exercise. He’s done that many times. Only they don’t get that he knows. He knows way too much.

They don’t really try to corner him, though, he realises. They move in, say a few words, reach for his arm. _You can’t walk here. I want you to come outside with me again._ But they don’t force him to leave. They can’t. Another thing he knows.

There’s colour peeking out between black-clad legs. Cream-coloured tacky with red.

He moves past the officers there, black shadows and pale faces moving within his field of vision. They make room for him, parting like the wings of the grand black door to death, inviting him in. He gets down on his knees and his hand doesn’t even shake when he brushes his palm over sandy fur. The body beneath is still warm to the touch. She looks like she’s sleeping, except she never slept like this, spine bent in a tight curve of agony, two red holes in her side. He had wanted to call her something special. She had wanted to call her Luna. He thought that was special enough for him.

He strokes over her head, down her ear, along her leg and paw, limbs that would never twitch again in her sleep, running wild and free.

He straightens up again and looks down at the dead Labrador by his feet. That’s one. If he can look at her, he can look at everything else, too, he thinks. So he moves again, stepping over the broken body, bedded in its own puddle of red and marked with a yellow sign. Number 14.

There’s a woman standing by the open patio doors. She looks up when he’s close, at him, then behind him. Whatever she sees in the officer’s face behind his back, she steps aside, granting him a last weary look. They seem to leave him alone now, let him roam. He steps outside and the cicadas’ song is overwhelming. He makes it his own, tries to focus on it, the swell and fall like the heartbeat of the night.

It’s like a play unfolding in front of his eyes. He’s standing at the top of the slope leading down to his garden, gently dipping down to the stage below. There’s a floodlight, its garish light washing over everything in stark contrast to the surrounding darkness. More moving silhouettes against the backdrop of dark trees. In and out of the light they move. In and out of the wings. They are quietly saying their lines, but he’s the only audience.

He puts one foot forward, gravity and that momentum drag him down the rest of the path. Only needs one gear to crank the mechanism up. If he can look at her, he can look at everything else, too, he thinks. He’s never been so wrong.

He slows to a stop at the end of the slope, just outside the blinding circle of light, hesitating, for as long as he’s in the dark, he can safely look at that scene in front of him. He’s nothing more than a bystander, but the actors on the stage start moving again, moving towards him with the same gestures and the same lines, and he takes the last step.

He’s bathed in light, everything is. Glaring, silvery white light.

Someone is moaning and he realises it’s him.

He’s on his knees and doesn’t know how he got there. There’s so much blood everywhere and his hands are raised, shaking now and ghosting over the naked, decapitated body of his wife lying in the grass. He doesn’t know where to touch her. There’s not a space on her skin not covered in blood or violence. His brain disengages itself from what his eyes are seeing, plainly refusing to make sense of something too abhorrent to grasp.

There’s nothing left on her body that resembles life anymore, resembles even a body. It’s like an abstract sculpture lying in the grass. For what is a body without a head.

His eyes roam, he can’t stop himself. Violence surrounded by yellow markers. And when he sees brown hair behind the stone bench he’s kneeling next to, open eyes and red blood on white skin, he doubles down into the grass. His throat constricts. He’s struggling to breathe, forcing air down against the tightening of his chest. He’s dragging his hands through the sticky blood he’s kneeling in, nails dragging up dirt, mouth open in a silent scream. He can’t stop it. There’s not a sound coming out of his throat. He can’t stop it, the mute wail of pure agony. He can’t stop it and he thinks he might suffocate, unable to draw in the next breath.

That scream that’s only in his head and doesn’t leave his throat drowns out everything else for what feels like eternity, but the moment he feels hands on him again, the sound comes rushing back.

“Get him out of here.”

“Who the fuck is in charge here?!”

“Do not let him touch the body.”

”Get him the fuck out of here!”

There are hands on his arms and shoulders and back and they try to drag him up, pry him away from her. They are talking to him, saying his name over and over again like a prayer. They are making way too much noise when this should be nothing but a silent tomb.

He’s reaching out to touch her wrist in the grass right in front of him. There’s a dark bruise around the joint, tiny spots of red covering the skin like an ornament. He hesitates, doesn’t know if he wants to touch her, doesn’t know if he can live without doing so either, but his hands are all bloody. That’s when they drag him up. There’s so much noise around him, agitated voices talking to him, to each other, but all he can see is her body, violated in ways he’s seen so often he feels like he’s in a dream.

He struggles against the arms and hands pulling him away. All he wants is to get down on his knees again, drape himself over her, shield her from that harsh light and all those strangers looking down at her exposed body. Then he just wants to sink into the ground with her, bury himself with her.

 _I’m sorry!_ _I’m sorry I didn’t want to touch you! I’m sorry! Please let me touch her. Please just let me touch her!_

His mind is screaming at him. He tries to wrestle himself out of their grip, but every hand he shakes loose is quickly replaced. They drag and pull and he grunts in wordless frustration.

_Please, just once. Just this one time. Please._

They almost wrestle him down on his knees again in their attempt to get him away, but then there’s a hand on his chest, pushing him back, and he’s stumbling out of the light and into darkness.

He exhales and the world comes crashing back, zoning into focus, too sharp around the edges. The spoken words around him become clear again, the hands on his body still when he does. He’s standing in the dark, peering down at the spectacle in front of him. From actor to audience again.

“Where is she?”

His voice sounds like it’s been dragged through gravel.

“Where is she?”

They all fall silent again. He curls his shaking hands into fists by his side and lifts his gaze to look at them, to single out a face right in front of him. He doesn’t remember that face, doesn’t remember anything about it, just that he decides to pick that person to answer his question.

“Where is my daughter?”

Eyes evade his question, looking down and sideways like they would gaze right through the skull they’re sitting in if they could, and he follows that gaze. He feels his heart hammering in his throat like it wants to be spit out and die on the grounds he has bought like everything else he loved.

Behind that black-clad shoulder, there’s a vat standing in the grass, some kind of tank, stainless, throwing back distorted reflections of its surroundings like a wormhole in space. It’s so clean he wants to puke. Even the grass around it is untainted. It’s sitting in his garden like an anomaly, an aberration, order and spotless perfection in the midst of chaos and blood. Kubrick’s fucking monolith taking the wrong turn just to mock him. He stares.

It’s quiet around him now and there must be holes in his fingertips and in the soles of his feet because he’s leaking. He feels like he’s bleeding out, his life seeping into the ground, dripping from his hands. He turns away and his vision is lagging behind. The image of the silver vat, of the bloody shell on the ground, of the stone bank and the severed head, of the people in white and those in black, of that circle of light, it’s there for a second, burnt into his retina like the blotches from looking into the sun as a kid, that bright light sending his cells into overdrive. Only it’s a negative, black objects in white.

The movement of his head makes that image blur, he blinks and it fades out. They let go of him and he’s staggering away from it all, withdrawing further into the dark.

He doesn’t even need them to tell him what happened to their bodies. He’s seen all there is to see. He knows exactly how it would have played out, what they would have done, how they would have violated their bodies in every possible way.

He just doesn’t know who watched whom die.

He’s on his knees and retches into the grass, the meagre contents of his stomach today, too much coffee and too little food.

His girls.

They took all his girls.

He can’t get enough air. His heartbeat is like a drum in his ear, frantic, and his head feels like it’s stuffed with cotton, cheeks and lips and neck tingling with something crawling under his skin. A sharp pain blooms in his chest and his hand comes up to fist in his shirt, pressing against his sternum where it hurts. He panics, breath coming in rapid, wheezing gasps.

“Okay, I need you to look at me now, sir.”

Someone turns him away from where he’s kneeling and pulls his head up a little. He blinks into a light shown into his eyes.

“Okay. Mr. Gillick, I need you to listen to me now.”

A hand pushes against his chest right over the pain, but he sees nothing but white.

“Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Purse your lips. I want you to take long, controlled breaths, okay? In through your nose, out through your mouth. Focus on my voice.”

He closes his eyes and drops his head, primal fear surging through his veins.

“In. And out.”

He struggles to draw air into his lungs and it feels like his nose is not adequately equipped for the job. The air gets trapped in his throat and he opens his mouth again.

“In and out. Come on. Again. In.”

He tries again, hears the air wheezing through his constricted windpipe, tries to hold it there, forcing his aching lungs to expand.

“And out.”

He pushes the air out through pursed lips like he’s been told.

“Very good. Take your time.”

He concentrates on the palm against his chest, warmth seeping through fabric and skin.

“In.”

Another shaky breath and it feels just a little easier.

“And out.”

Pursed lips and that painful knot in his chest is just that little bit looser.

“Again.”

He repeats the process again and again. Each round seems to expand his chest a little more until he doesn’t feel like he’s suffocating anymore. He loses track of time, can’t keep up counting his inhales and exhales. It feels like eternity.

When he thinks he’s got enough control over his breath again, he sits back a little. The hand leaves his chest, still holding a dull ache. He’s feeling dizzy, and with the sudden movement, a brutal headache washes over him, blood pulsing behind his eyes. His hands are shaking again, this time with cold, and the shudder takes over his whole body. He feels utterly spent and exhausted.

“Okay, I want you to follow me to my car now. We’ll get you a blanket there—”

“No.”

Hoarse and weak. He’s struggling to his feet, pushing the hands away that are trying to support him. They only want to drag him away again, away from where he really wants to be.

“Mr. Gillick…”

A hand reaches for his arm again and he shoves his palm against the paramedic’s chest.

“Don’t touch me.”

He’s got enough of strangers pulling and pushing him. He’s got enough of hearing his own name over and over again.

The other man stumbles half a step back and he uses that moment to turn around and walk up the rest of the slope to his house again. He’s inside before anyone can really decide what to do with him, climbing up the stairs to the second floor, desperate to leave all those strangers invading his home behind. He stops on the last step, peers into the corridor, left and right, waiting for something to jump at him from dark corners or from behind closed doors. But there’s nobody there and he can’t see anything unusual on that floor. No blood. Nothing broken. Taking a deep breath, he rubs his fist over that spot of dull pain in his chest and looks at the upturned book lying on the step by his feet.

He leaves it and walks up to the bedroom door where he stops again without knowing what he’s waiting for. Nothing but silence. His palm pressed flat against the surface, he gives the door a gentle shove. It swings open with a squeak. He’s wanted to fix that but never found the time.

The room is undisturbed, street lights and the moon peering inside with gentle smiles. He’s exhausted and cold and numb, like when he spent too many hours in the surf as a kid. A slight tremor is running through his body.

He closes the door but doesn’t lock it. They’d only bust it open when they try to check on him and suspect he could have done something stupid inside.

On weak legs he moves around the bed and sits down in the corner between the wall and the bedside, sliding down with his back to the wall when he feels his feet won’t carry him any longer. He grabs a blanket, drags it off the bed and drapes it around his body.

He feels like he’ll never be warm again in his life.

He’s so fucking tired.

His chest hurts.

Other than that, he feels nothing at all anymore. Something in his brain decided to flip a switch and kick out what’s not immediately important for survival. He doesn’t know if he appreciates that. But right now, he just wants to curl up and sink into sleep, maybe wake up to realise it’s been nothing but a dream, or maybe never wake up at all again.

He was stretched out on the couch, arms stacked on top of each other on the armrest, chin resting on his hands. Sofia’s face was so close, their noses almost touched. She wore the expression of a very serious ten-year-old girl, mouth set in grim determination, a slight scowl between her eyebrows. She was sitting on her legs and staring at him, her hands unconsciously curled into fists at her side.

He kept his face neutral, returning her stare, and fighting down the itch to break out into a fit of laughter at his daughter’s display of solemn seriousness. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Elena sitting at the dining table, sifting through stacks of photos. The room was dead silent except for the ticking of the clock on the wall.

After a while, his wife looked up and he could feel his lips twitch, which Sofia immediately noticed, her gaze darting down to his mouth and back up again. There was a decidedly mischievous glint in her eyes now. She thought she had him, but he knew better.

He cocked an eyebrow at her and she squinted at him, full of suspicion. He scooted closer, his nose now touching hers, and opened his eyes wide in shock. She pursed her lips, trying to stifle a grin. He could see the way her jaw was tightening. Oh, he had her. He wrinkled his nose at her and she stuck out her tongue. In mock horror, he slapped his hand against his chest as if he’d been hit there and rolled his eyes. With a last thought about how this might actually not be a very good idea, he rolled around and off the couch, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from groaning when his back hit the floor.

He stayed like that, on his back, wide-eyed gaze to the ceiling, and didn’t move a muscle. She was over him in a second, staring at him upside down, serious concern fighting against the will to carry on with the game. He waited a couple of seconds, then his eyes slowly moved inwards to look at his nose.

There was surprise on her face, then anger and, finally, her mouth split into a grin. She punched him in the shoulder but started giggling at the same time. In mock horror, he groaned and twisted and held his arm but started grinning, too. Soon, they were both laughing tears.

It took them both a couple of minutes to calm down again. He wiped his eyes and sighed, unable to hold down another chuckle. She was sitting by his head, leaning back against the couch, grinning down at him, and he just thought he didn’t want her to get older even another day.

The ticking clock made him aware of the time again and he looked over to the wall. Way past bedtime again. He caught his daughter’s gaze and tipped his head to the stairs.

_Go get ready for bed._

She rolled her eyes at him but smiled and bent down to press a kiss against his brow. He gave her a wide smile.

_Good night._

She would read in bed anyway.

He watched her get up and say goodnight to her mom before she climbed the stairs to the second floor. His gaze remained with his wife, but hers, in turn, watched their daughter’s bare feet vanish at the top of the stairs, then returned to him still lying on the floor. They looked at each other and he smiled at her, but he could see the thoughtfulness in her eyes even from that distance.

“You don’t even need to sign.”

Her words were soft but rang loudly in the silence surrounding them. No accusation, just fact.

His smile faltered and he looked down at his drawn-up knees, thumb twiddling with his wedding band.

“You should be here more often.”

So very softly.

He sighed deeply, then pushed himself up and to his feet again. The book Sofia had been reading was still lying on the other armrest, open and turned upside-down. He picked it up, placed the ribbon marker inside before closing it and put it down on the small side table by the couch. Fingertips sweeping over the cover, he stood with his head slightly bowed, shoulders a little tense.

“I know.”

He wakes with a start, completely disoriented with the way bright daylight filters in through the bedroom windows. It takes him a long moment to even understand where he is, but then his situation comes back to him and he feels the dull ache settle in his chest again. He takes a deep breath and pushes his body up to his feet, draping the blanket over his shoulders. He doesn’t even know where he wants to go, why he even bothers to stand up at all. He’s hungry, thirsty and he needs to piss. His body aches because he’s been sleeping in a weird position, half sitting and leaning against the wall, and his crumpled clothes are sticking to him in a way only a suit worn for more than 24 hours in humid air can. But he’s not keen about doing anything about any of these situations really.

While he shuffles to the door, he considers checking if anyone’s still downstairs, but then he sees the bloody shoe print on the floor. A red mark of the tip of a shoe pressed into the soft, beige carpet. He doesn’t move, just stares at it, then realises there is blood on his shoe, too. He lifts his foot, looking at the tip of his shoe in bright light. Dried blood sticking to burgundy leather, and he remembers stepping into a puddle down in the hallway last night.

A crude fact.

It makes him gag and he presses his fist against his mouth and swallows hard to stifle that reflex. Like a bystander, he feels his face contort in agony and his teeth press together so hard it hurts.

Because he can't even be sure whose blood this is.

Long shaking breaths. One, two. Come on.

He presses the air out against his knuckles and his eyes closed, swallows again, then takes a look around. He’s left faint traces of blood on the floor when he moved through the room last night, red imprints disappearing around the corner of the bed.

He steps out into the corridor. They are there, too, leading from the stairs to this room like the track of a one-legged animal. He’s left footprints on this clean floor.

He’s standing in the corridor in absolute silence, straining to hear any voices below, but there’s nothing and he already knows they won’t be there anymore.

But he can’t. He can’t go down there now. It’s like the glaring sunlight would only make him see what he doesn’t want to see. He knows they would have taken everything away, that they have taken _them_ away, but he still can’t get himself to go and see.

Instead, he bends down to unlace his shoes, steps out of them and parks them neatly by the bedroom door, one soiled, one clean. His socks come off, too, because it feels like the blood had seeped through into the fabric. He bundles them and stuffs them into one of the shoes. The clean one. Then he turns away from the red marks on the hardwood floor and pads further down the corridor.

He could have closed his eyes and still would have known where his feet carried him. The door to Sofia’s room is still closed like all the other doors on that floor. Untouched. Pure. Still, he swallows and drapes the blanket tighter around his shoulders before he opens it.

There’s nothing there.

The room is completely unchanged. Warm yellow and orange walls covered in posters. A stack of books on the bedside table. Clothes in a heap on the seat chest by the foot of the bed. The large desk covered in schoolbooks and pencils and half-finished drawings. Dark-blue silk curtains draped over the windows filter the bright sunlight, painting the room with obscure shadows.

He’s standing in the doorway and lets the smell of his daughter’s room wash over him. Sweet and spicy and dusty all at once. His eyes close and he sways as if he’s been hit by an actual breeze, his hand gripping the blanket tight where he’s tucked the edges together against his chest. The thought that she’s gone drags an unwanted whimper up his throat and his face twists in pain. The tears, equally unwanted, he swallows down and scrapes a hand over his face before he steps into the room, softly closing the door behind him.

Stupid as it is, he just wants to hide from it all at this point. He wants to sleep. He wants to not think. Not feel. He doesn’t know how long he’s slept exactly in the bedroom, but he feels like he’s been awake for a week, exhaustion pulling at his eyelids and the fabric of his very being.

On bare feet, he moves around photos covering a good part of the floor, careful to not look down long enough to have his brain process what they depict. He rolls down the blinds to keep the light out together with everything else, then pads through the dark to settle down in his daughter’s reading nook by the floor-to-ceiling windows. He leans his head against the wall, readjusts the blanket, drawing his feet under the soft wool, and closes his eyes again.

The world around him bloomed up in bright shades of white at the exact same time he felt the surge of adrenaline kicking in. His ears stuffed with cotton wool, everything sounded muffled. What he knew had to be screams all around him vibrated through his body like drumbeats. His vision was fading around the edges, something more than white crawling in. Eyes wide open, he tried to get information through to his brain, but he just couldn’t see right. He tilted his head and the world was lagging behind.

People moved into his focus, shapes of eyes and noses and mouths, their words a droning blur. He tried to say something but wasn’t sure he even had control over his lips and tongue anymore. An itch made him look down his own body. Bright red blood blooming all over his white shirt from the collar down to his dress pants. His hands lifted waist-high, palms up.

The last thing he remembered was all the blood on his palms and that he felt sick. Then he went down.

He came to again a couple of hours later in a hospital bed with his wife and daughter sitting by his bedside, red-eyed and pale. When he tried to move, he hissed with the sharp pain in his left shoulder and the dull throbbing at the back of his head.

That is what you get in Mexico for annoying the wrong people.

He needed his wife and the doctor, one of his colleagues and his assistant to describe to him what had actually happened because he could try so hard his head hurt, all he remembered where scraps of events, like snapshots popping up without any real order and sense to them.

The last coherent memory he had was that he’d rolled in a massive win in the Martínez case and that he’d been a mile high on dopamine because that actually implied a much needed breakthrough concerning the mud pond that was the Juárez police department. He’d waded through it, waist-high in muck and filth, hitting wall after wall for years. But now he could provide proof of corruption for at least 200 police officers and those were only the explicit cases. So he had trudged through even more mud of equally corrupt members of the judiciary, calling in favours left and right to back them up against the corner and forced them to look closely. And this, this had been the first win, and a landslide win at that, one that he hoped would carry him all the way to purge Juárez’ police force in one massive stroke.

He had not exactly been prepared to get dragged under by the debris he had kicked off.

And it wasn’t even the defendant. It was a man with the name of Gustavo Manzanares, 31, waiter in a restaurant, married, three kids. He had never heard of him before, but that didn’t keep the man from stabbing a 2.5 inch switchblade into his shoulder. The knife had bounced off his collarbone and dug deep into the meaty part underneath, right between deltoid and pectoral.

He actually didn’t remember any of this except for that feeling of warm liquid trickling down his chest and arm and how it had made him gag.

The doctor told him he got lucky because there wasn’t any damage to his lungs, sinews or major arteries.

His colleague told him he got lucky because it all happened on the double staircase leading down to the atrium and that guy actually stood a couple of steps above him, so he didn’t get to hit where he probably wanted.

His assistant told him he got lucky because he hit his head hard on one of the steps when he blacked out, explaining his headache, but nothing really worse happened.

His wife told him he was a stupid idiot.

The next time he wakes, it’s dark again, not only dark inside the room but actually dark outside when he tentatively rolls up the blinds a bit.

He’s sweating, like a fever rolling over him in waves. He peels off his jacket and carefully drapes it over the chair next to the desk, then unbuttons his sleeves and rolls them up. A mechanism, handling his clothes, a well-oiled machine. He walks through the room like a barefooted ghost, letting routine and instinct take over. It’s probably a bad idea, but he doesn’t feel like he can actually handle anything else right now.

He also really needs to relieve himself now and leaves his daughter’s room, but walks past the bathroom on this floor to go downstairs, ignoring the upturned book and the dried blood he had left on the steps. Probably another bad idea. He doesn’t understand why. Maybe it’s the wish to not let the house get the upper hand, don’t let the fear of something irrational and dark become bigger than it really is. Maybe it’s just a twisted form of curiosity. But he stops on the last step like the carpet might burn the soles of his feet if he actually stepped down into the living room. A really bad idea. Dumb, bad idea.

The room lies in eerie silence, all the grey shades, the colour palette of the night, painting corners and things and walls. He can clearly make out the dark patch on the carpet where his dog had bled out, but the body is gone. He knows all the bodies are gone, as are the evidence markers assigning numbers to violence. All the equipment is gone. The people, gone. The patio doors are closed, keeping out those things in the garden, but the signs of destruction are still there, dominating the room like an intense smell.

He braces himself and steps down onto the carpet. Contrary to his expectations, it doesn’t sear his feet or swallow him alive but lets him pass peacefully, soft and warm against his skin. He deliberately ignores the clock on the wall he can’t really make out anyway in the dark, but a thought makes him take off his own watch and place it face-down on the side table by the couch. He doesn’t want time now.

His own bloody shoe prints are still there, the one-legged animal stumbling around the room again. The other dark patch is still there, too, on the couch, the side he liked to sit on, so he settles down on the other end and it feels like a violation of law. He sits and stares at the dead TV on the wall. The room behind his back is like a breathing, pulsing thing. It makes his skin crawl, but he forces himself to not turn around.

The clock is ticking, overbearing in all that silence now, but after a while it fades. Or maybe it merges with his own inner clock, heartbeat aligning with the tick-tock of passing moments. He actively witnesses how he’s zoning out, body and mind, his breath slowing down to deep inhales and long exhales.

Flares of brightness and specks of silver and skin like morning light. Perfect teeth like pearls threaded on a ribbon, clicking with every wave washing ashore.

The sticky sweat of 5 o’clock sweltering heat beating down already.

Mango juice exploding on tongues and dripping down chins. Mouths and lips sucking on skin. Laughter turning to moans and touch to sin.

The waves washing over the rhythm of entangled legs and quiet noises, of skin on skin so close they all but melt, that sweet ache where two become one, taut muscles and tight grips, that moment right there, breakpoint, no movement, frozen in frame, bliss.

He blinks. Tilts his head. He has no idea how long he’s been sitting there, thinking nothing at all and all too much. Could have been hours or minutes. He thinks that maybe, if he just sat here a while longer, he might sink into the couch and become part of that dead house that he’s the only anomaly in now anyway.

But essential parts of his body make it very clear now that he should not delay the inevitable any longer unless he wants to count pissing himself to the general state his body is in already. So he is up and moving again, ghosting through the hallway down to the guest bathroom. He treads carefully, stepping around all the dark spots he can make out on the floor, and is bewildered by how little emotional reaction that provokes in him. He thinks he’s maybe already becoming part of the house.

The bathroom is as untouched as the second floor. Not worth their while. He steps inside and closes the door out of habit, briefly considers switching on the light because the small window leaves the room in a perpetual state of darkness, but decides against it.

He raises the toilet lid, pauses, then raises the seat, too. It feels like betrayal and the only possible way he can do this at the same time, by not sitting down. So when he braces a hand against the wall, it’s like a slapstick scene in a horror movie. The relieve washing over him after holding back for too long makes him want to howl because he wants to stop and can’t at the same time.

It’s a thing, he’s telling himself. Just a thing. You’re breathing, too, swallowing, blinking. A thing that needs to be done. Get it over with.

He gets himself to that point of nervous numbness again by the time he tucks himself in and flushes.

But he leaves the seat up.

Another reflex makes him turn on the water to wash his hands, but when it splashes over his palms, he can see it take on a darker colour. Dark grey on light grey, it spirals down the sink and he’s staring at his hands, realising they are caked in his wife’s dried blood that had been seeping into the ground last night. Too late he understands what he’s doing there, turns off the tap, watches in aghast horror as the water swirls down red into the drain. He’s torn between scrubbing the skin off his hands and dragging his palms over the porcelain surface in an attempt to catch as much of her as he possibly can.

It’s that second, that dilemma, him standing over the sink completely frozen while bloody water drips from his fingertips, it’s that exact point in space and time his brain has been waiting for ever since he saw those flashing lights in the night sky above his house. It has been lurking in the dark, crouching low, motionless, just for him to make that one mistake, that one crucial mistake he can never take back. It has been waiting for this, just to send it all crashing down.

His gaze comes up and he sees something reflected back at him in the mirror, something born out of horror and sheer agony, and he loses it.

He drives his fist into the mirror and it cracks into a thousand pieces. Pain flares up in his hand so intense, he doesn’t know if it’s freezing cold or searing hot. He slams his fist into the wall again and again and again and again, broken glass exploding all around him, bouncing off the sink and his clothes, dropping on his bare feet and the floor. He is nothing but rage and he wouldn’t know how to stop even if he wanted to.

When he’s too exhausted to hit anymore, he slams his flat hand against the dead mirror, then both his hands. The sharp pain in his palms when he drives the broken shards into his skin tears him back into now. He screams and flings his fists against the sink, vaguely aware of his own blood coating the surface now, fresh red on white, so much brighter than what he had washed off his skin.

At one point, an hour or ten seconds later, the pain in his hands becomes unbearable and he drops to the floor and screams like no living being should ever have the right to scream. He screams until his lungs have burnt out all the oxygen. He screams like his heart wants to wrench itself from his chest, agonising wails bouncing off the walls. He doubles over without stopping, curls into himself, his screams muffled by the proximity of his own body and the floor. He screams until his voice breaks, vocal cords bursting into flames, and the scream breaks into a raw moan. It sounds like something strange and very alien to his own ears, the most excruciating pain a thing alive could feel.

He cradles his bleeding hands against his chest, curling around them in an attempt to protect them from more pain or to make that pain his centre he’s not sure. He tips his forehead against the floor, glass crunching under his body with every move. The wailing of a broken animal echoes off the tiles.

Then silence and, finally, tears. Just endless tears falling to the floor, his whole body shaking with the sudden acceptance of something so atrocious his brain can’t make sense of it. He’s sobbing and it feels like he’s suffocating, heaving in breath after breath, moans grating over sore throat. He presses his forehead against the tiles, broken shards under his knees and bare feet. A loud, raw groan tumbles endlessly from his chest and his shoulders heave with tension, his body writhing on the floor with unbearable agony.

He cries until his body is so overwhelmed with grief and exhaustion, there is nothing more it can give.

He sleeps there that night, letting his weight drag him down onto the tiles were tears and sweat and blood mingle with scrunching shards of glass. He’s lying on his side, curled into a tight ball, looking at his hands in the dark, knowing that his blood is coating hers now.

His daughter was running towards him.

He was making love to his wife.

Two images. Dual negatives of joy.

Sofia was squealing, curly ponytail bouncing while she raced across the lawn as fast as her short legs would carry her.

Elena was arching into him, fingers digging into his back while he sucked at that tender spot just below her ear.

He watched his daughter tumble, then catch herself, taking half a step forward with the instinct to rush to her if she fell.

He heard his wife moan, whisper sweet things against his skin, her legs hooking over his hips to pull him down.

A grain filter over that memory, as if he watched it on an old video tape, the sun a glaring lens flare, oversaturation tinging everything with green and yellow, all the movements that tiny fraction too quick for real life.

A haze coating his emotions, as if he relived that memory through muffled walls, heavy breath a dull drone, sweat smelling like honey and salt, their movements drawn out on slow-motion repeat.

He held his arms wide open, bent his knees, anticipating her little body crashing into him like that whirlwind of overabundant joy and delight and just pure life.

He pushed his hand down between their bodies, rubbing circles where her legs were splayed wide around his hips, pushing himself into her while their breaths became ragged and their bodies erratic.

Her face was the last thing he saw, so close to his, all scrunched up in laughter and toothy grin, wild strands of hair framing chubby cheeks and dimples and button nose.

Her body was the last thing he felt, tightening around him, digging nails deep into his skin, his own bliss washing over him like a storm soon after and shattering him into dust.

His arms closed around her the same second she vanished. He stumbled forward with the momentum, nothing but thin air pressed against his chest. She was gone.

He moaned through his orgasm the same moment her body went slack under his. His hips stuttered, then halted, pressed against her, and he willed his eyes open just to look at her. But her head was gone.

He wakes up.

Slowly pushes out a breath that feels like he’s been holding it while he slept.

There’s clarity there, in every fibre of his being.

It’s still night. Or again. He doesn’t know. Doesn’t care either. He’s still lying on the tiles, world tilted sideways, the copper smell of dried blood invading his senses. Broken shards are lying under his curled hands like frozen teardrops. Every little bit of warmth seems to have drained from his body, seeping into the cool tiles while he slept, his body forever fluctuating between too hot and too cold now.

He tries swallowing. His throat feels swollen, raw, burning with the sensation. It makes him cough, sending waves of pain up from his chest, pulsing in his head and hands. His tongue is like a foreign thing in his mouth and he knows he didn’t drink or eat anything in either one or two days. The tip of his tongue tests the texture of dry lips.

He tries to move his hands, splays his fingers and feels the dried blood crack while his palms and knuckles start throbbing with dull pain. Bright red blood is bubbling up from the strain, starting to drip down caked skin again.

He starts to rise, stiff body protesting loudly, glass crunching under him everywhere. He presses his hands against the tiles to push himself up but hisses and pulls back quickly when the pain digs searing hot into his palms and joints. His bare feet, however, are numb with cold and he’s grateful for that, drawing them under his body to get up.

He’s standing in a sea of glittering gems, blinking leisurely at him in the moonlight. The broken, blind mirror at the wall stares at him like a gaping void, a black hole into his soul. The sink is splattered with dried blood, splashes of red on the wall and on the floor, red streaks on his bare arms and where he can’t really see them on the dark fabric of his shirt. It looks like a slaughterhouse, like he had killed a tiny animal and left it to bleed out in that sink.

He’s stained the undisturbed second floor with his footprints, ruined the only clean room on this floor with his blood. He’s dragging death and destruction through this house like an iron ball shackled to his ankle. The raging, wailing bull in the china shop of delicate death.

But there’s clarity now. So much of it.

He opens the door and steps out of the small room, barely notices the crunching of glass under his naked feet. Not even trying to avoid the dried blood on the floor this time, he pads through the hallway, maybe even adding fresh prints of his own. He drags his aching fingers over that dried dark mark on the door frame to the living room, _a hand trying to hold tight_ , leaving a fresh smear of red right over it.

He wanders with purpose through the eerie silence of the night covering his house like a blanket trying to suffocate everything in its sleep. He doesn’t mind that. There’s a kind of peace in his mind right now, like someone is pressing a pillow over his mouth and nose but does so with affection and care, wants to make him sleep to forget.

He wanders with purpose through his house, making peace with it as he recognises that the state his home is in is not its fault at all. He climbs the stairs, bloody palm dragging along the handrail like a soothing caress. _It’s okay. I get it. It’s done._

He’s thoroughly broken, inside and out, and his mind is circling around only one thing really.

He adds red prints of bare feet to the darker marks of shoe soles on the second floor. The animal’s got two legs now. His shoes still neatly parked next to the bedroom door amaze him for a second, like he thought someone must have taken them away while he slept.

Inside the room, he barely stops in his tracks to wipe his hand over the dusty top of the wardrobe until his bleeding fingers find the small key up there. He walks up to the nightstand on his side of the bed and opens the top drawer, key turning smoothly in the lock. The Glock is lying on a rubber mat inside, all sleek black against the dark, a loaded magazine next to it. He doesn’t hesitate for a second, taking the gun out and sliding the magazine into it, releasing the safety and pulling back the slide all in one smooth motion.

He presses the muzzle against his temple and wraps his finger around the trigger. His face twitches, breath pressed out through gritted teeth, and his whole body tenses up.

Time freezes.

But the moment his brain is not exploding against the wall like he intended, he knows he won’t do it. His teeth grind against each other, snarling, his body starts shaking with the way his muscles are all tightly knotted up head to toe. He sucks in a trembling breath and holds it, almost lifts himself on his toes and digs the muzzle of the gun harder into his skin.

His lungs are burning up the oxygen and protest fiercely against his ribs. His hand trembles violently, vice-like around the grip of the gun, finger pressed tightly against the trigger, and he hopes he might just send the shot of by accident. But he knows it won’t happen. He knows he can’t kill himself. He can’t even do that.

An angry groan, thick with impotent frustration, and the muzzle slides from his temple. He almost falls forward, his whole body going slack, bracing the other hand against the wall while he pushes out the burnt-up air through pursed lips.

He’s shaking with adrenaline and he hates himself. Beads of sweat are running down the side of his face and catching on his brows, dripping into his eyes. He blinks and wipes at them, then thumbs the safety on again and lets the Glock slip from his hand onto the bed, his body following soon after, legs giving in under him. He sits next to the gun, slumped, and puts his head in his hurting, trembling hands, smearing blood from barely sealed cuts all over his face.

He’s crying almost silently this time, mute sobs wrecking his body and liquid salt burning against his raw palms.

They are gone.

They are gone. They are gone. They are gone. They are gone, they are gone, they are gone they are gone they are gonetheyaregonethey…

He beats his fists into the mattress, sending flares of pain up his wrists, and he tips his head back and wails at the ceiling, staring up at it like he might find anything there, tears streaking down his cheeks. His voice fades into a whimper and he closes his eyes, face twitching with relentless pain as his whole body realises he’s never going to touch them again, that there’s nothing really left of them he could touch, that he’s never going to hear his wife say his name again, never going to see his daughter’s eyes light up with pure joy again. He will never see them again. He won’t grow old with Elena. He won’t see Sofia grow up, graduate, marry, have kids or do whatever she wants with her life. He just won’t see her grow up.

He slides from the bed down to his knees, hides in that nook between the bed and the wall. He presses his head against the wallpaper, shattered hands in his lap, while all those moments that are never meant to be flash past behind his closed eyes.

Handing his daughter the keys to her first car.

Holding his grandchild in his arms.

Holding his own child in his arms, a baby brother or sister for Sofia.

A hand over Elena’s round belly.

Taking them to Canada where they all had wanted to go.

Renting a caravan to travel the country, just him and Elena.

Teaching Sofia how to dance.

Dancing with his wife again.

See them smile and giggle when he tells Luna to do tricks.

He hits his head against the wall, his whole body rocking back and forth. He’s never going to do any of these things. _They_ are never going to experience anything in their life again. They’ve been cut off from all those possible moments, just ripped out of life in an instance, light, then dark. Gone.

And he’s to stay behind. He’s to remain in this misery of a life because he can’t even muster the courage to end it. He’s to stay and cope and spin meaning from void and darkness to plug all the holes in his body and heart and soul when he’s sitting here not even knowing how to breathe anymore.

He feels dead.

A shell leaning against the wall of his bedroom with his palms turned up in his lap so as not to hurt them any more and what exactly is the reason behind that.

They had told him. Over and over again, they had told him. _Don’t do this. You’re in way over your head. Stop it before it’s too late. You’re crazy. Think about your family._

But he wouldn’t listen.

He just wouldn’t listen. He’d been so sure in his suit and fucking tie, taking on the problem cases since day one, right out of law school, acing the bar exam, big ego and big ideals.

He had to bury himself in police corruption and court corruption and state corruption up to the neck while his wife gave birth to their daughter. He had to push through cases the state wasn’t expecting to win anyway while Elena raised their child. He tucked them away in Monterrey, far from drugs and cartels and dead bodies hanging from bridges, and he believed them to be safe. He bought a big house with a nice garden as an excuse for his absence.

They’ve been a family through all this, and a good one at that. Elena had known what she was getting into when she picked up that cocky boy with the big grin and an ego taller than his lanky body on the UDEM campus grounds on a sultry September day.

She was prepared, more than he was anyway. She backed him up all the way rising through the ranks, pissing off senior lawyers left and right. She reassured him when he doubted, caught him when he stumbled. She had his back through everything and tried to pinch off time with him for Sofia and for herself, for them. She made bubbles out of hours, creating a world in half a day to have him play with his daughter and forget about the horrors outside and he could only stare at her in awe.

She watched him while he dug deep into the quagmire of cartel violence and drug trade and trafficking around the US-Mexican border. She took so many things off his back and added them to what she already shouldered so he could go poke his finger into wounds nobody wanted to look at, scooping up connections between cartel activities and state money by the handful and using what he found as leverage to go down hard on the cartels, hurt them where it really mattered.

And all the time, through her support and wise words and kisses healing his wounded pride when he hit another wall, talking him through failure and frustration about _nothing will ever really change_ , all that time he could see the worry in her eyes, too. She worried for him, for him more than for herself really. She feared what he might drag behind one day or that he’d walk into a gaping wide maw without realising it. When he got stabbed in the shoulder that day, he could see in her face that this fear had been verified. And yet, not for a single time she had ever told him to stop what he was doing.

And all he had done was let them down. All he had achieved _ever_ in his life was to get his wife and daughter killed, murdered, as nothing but a message relayed to him. A business card. _Don’t Fuck With Us_. Their lives meant nothing to those people. He did. But they’d never kill him. He needed to be alive like so many others, a walking, talking embodiment of that message. _This is what you get, if you don’t listen. This is what you get for getting involved._

It’s beyond him now, how he could have ever thought his family was safe, how he could have thought they wouldn’t reach them here, how he could ever even think about bringing a baby into this world.

“I’m sorry.”

He whispers into the dark, face still pressed against the wall.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

He trails off, knowing it’ll never be enough, nothing ever will, just as nothing will ever be right again.

The sun is creeping up behind the row of trees outside the window when he moves again, the sky a little less dark, the contours of the bedroom a little less obscure. He moves away from the wall he’s been hugging in silent prayer like he was begging for absolution that was never to come. He feels his pulse picking up as if he awakens from a long and deep hibernation and wills his bruised and battered body into obedience.

On stiff limbs, he staggers through the room and over to the bathroom on the other side of the corridor, feet stinging with every step he takes. He’s faintly aware he’s leaving marks again, tiny red smears on white tiles this time. He doesn’t care about that anymore.

He turns on the water and lets the hot stream run over his palms and knuckles, pushing back the cold in his fingers and replacing it with newly awakened pain. He waits like that, careful not to look up and into the mirror, until the water has warmed up his skin and soaked the dried blood caked over it.

Blood of three people already on his hands.

His wife’s very visible.

His daughter’s without a trace because they left nothing for him to bury.

His own covering all that.

He waits until the water turns a muddy red and watches his own blood swirl down into the drain. It feels like all emotion is bleeding out of him, too. While he watches, he thinks about taking a knife and opening his skin, right there. More blood. More red for that hungry dark gaping hole in the sink. He imagines something sitting down there at the end of the drain, something blind and naked, gorge wide open to swallow whatever he sends down. It’s waiting for his blood, the blood of that last living thing in this house, still breathing and pulsing with heat, that anomaly. It’s not allowed to be here. It just doesn’t know that yet.

But he knows it’s just a thought he entertains. He knows he won’t try to end it that way, not if he wasn’t able to pull the trigger on a gun. That moment is gone now and he fears it won’t ever come back to him again. He’s supposed to live, some way or another. He just doesn’t know how.

When the water has rinsed most of the dried blood from his skin, he starts carefully rubbing his palms against each other, lightly pressing fingertips into skin to wash the remaining blood away. He winces and groans when his nails scrape over the heel of his left hand that looks swollen and angry. He bends down, trying to see something in the half-light of the new day. There’s something stuck in the flesh right below his thump, one of the glittering gems, a frozen teardrop. He picks at the cut to get to that little shard. His breath gets erratic with the way it hurts, but he finally manages to pull it out, a small trickle of bright new red bubbling up. He watches it run down his palm and drip from his fingers, holding the small shard of glass in the other hand.

And he remembers digging slivers out of Sofia’s hands, tiny fragments of wood. When she was younger, he had to do it at night while she was asleep because she wouldn’t let him otherwise, too afraid of probably the most terrifying thing her pure mind could come up with. He remembers kneeling in front of her bed with tweezers and a tiny flashlight, trying to pull those little bastards out under the most bizarre circumstances.

 _Got it!_ he would then say to Elena, holding up the tweezers with a smug grin, and she would laugh at him.

He takes a shaky breath and closes his eyes. Face distorted in grief, he lets that new wave of pain wash over his body, trying to brace against it like he braces his hands against the sink, but there’s really nothing left to shield him against the onslaught of emotion anymore.

When the worst is over, he opens his eyes, brows drawn tight, crouched low over the sink, and pushes that shaking breath out again. It ends in a sob and he wipes at the tears with the back of his hand, shoulders trembling with the tension tightening his body like a coiled spring.

He forces himself to take another breath and to finish what he has come for. The shard of glass washes down the drain with everything else and he rinses his hands until the water is as clear as it gets. He bends down to drink and splash water against his face, rubbing at the smeared blood there. The water has run cold by now, soothing against his hot skin and dry lips, washing down his wrecked throat. He’s lost any sense of time now, doesn’t know if it’s been one day or two or maybe even more since he left work. He knows the headache and light dizziness, the nausea and ever-present tremble in his hands and legs are probably as much the result of a deficit in food and water as of anything else, but he’s already gagging on that little gulp of water now, like his stomach refuses to take any more.

And eating. Just the thought of it makes him sick.

He turns off the tap and carefully dries his hands, then rummages around in the cabinet for bandages. Omitting his fingers since he has no idea how to cover them all, he wraps the dressing around his torn palms and knuckles, hiding the worst cuts, and tries not to look at the golden wedding band for too long.

There’s nothing stuck in the soles of his feet as far as he can see, sitting down on the rim of the bathtub. The cuts are more superficial. He assumes they will close and heal soon enough on their own.

After a while, he realises that he feels bored, an emotion so unexpected he’s almost shocked. He doesn’t know what to do with himself. He has no purpose, there’s nothing and nobody waiting for him, nobody important to him anyway. Sitting on the edge of the tub, feeling nothing suddenly, no rage or pain or grief, he’s trying to figure out what to do next. What are you supposed to do when there’s nothing left?

He thinks about Elena’s parents, about his own parents, about his brother, her siblings, about friends and colleagues and he just can’t get himself to feel anything. He knows he should probably call them, knows that they will find out eventually one way or another, maybe they already have, and that it would be better if he’d be the one telling them, but there is no energy left in him to deal with this now. Just the thought of having to talk to anyone makes his stomach clench. All he wants right now is to be buried in this house together with the ghosts of their memories.

For lack of anything else to do, he grabs a cloth and soaks it in warm water, gets a towel, too, and pads over to the bedroom again where he’s left the gun on the bed. He spreads the towel over the blanket and starts to disassemble the Glock, releases the magazine, pulls back the slide to drop the remaining bullet on the bed before he completely removes it and takes the coil and barrel out. He lays it all out on the bed and starts to wipe at his bloody fingerprints.

He remembers the day he bought that gun, on the day Elena told him she was pregnant. She teased him about it, seeing that he had not even been drafted. His theoretical knowledge about weapons would increase through the next years, but back then he’d been barely out of law school.

She was also not very keen on having a weapon in their home, but he felt the insane weight of responsibility bore down on him with the knowledge that he’d become a father soon. So he went to Mexico City, booked a flight the same day, and took Elena with him to take her out to a nice restaurant and have them stroll down to Xochimilco.

He knew it was naive, at best, completely irrational to buy that gun, but he felt better knowing it was there. He learned how to take it apart, clean and reassemble it, how to hold, load and fire it. He made it a habit to train on a firing range once a year, and yet he knew all that would mean nothing if they came to his home. They would laugh in his face and then do as they wish, but being confronted with violence so aggressive and unchecked like this, all he could do was to take every measure he could think of.

He’s done with the cleaning and reassembles the Glock, the motions coming easy but the frame still not familiar in his hands. Without thinking twice, he tucks the gun inside his waistband at his back, not because he’s afraid they could come back to kill him—he knows they won’t, just like he knows he would welcome them—but because the weight of it feels like an anchor, like it’s part of his new reality now, giving him focus where he can’t find it himself.

Maybe he’d use it, if they came back. Maybe he just wants it with him as a reminder. Maybe he finds the strength eventually, to follow through with that last pull of his finger. He doesn’t mind the vagueness of it.

He weighs the single bullet in his bandaged palm, the one that was meant for him, and slides it into the pocket of his pants. He locks the drawer of the nightstand, throws the stained towel and cloth into the tub and then starts to take down all the clocks in his house. He simply doesn’t want the time anymore. There’s nothing it could tell him. He walks through his home, taking them off walls, removing the batteries, stopping clock hands, banishing the tick-tock of proceeding life. He leaves them face-down on tables and cupboards because he doesn’t want to look at them, doesn’t want them to look at him.

The sun is fully out by now and that clock of all clocks seems to mock him through the windows, following him through the rooms while he cleans his house of urgencies and deadlines. So he starts pulling down the blinds, too, because he can’t take the sun down, leave it face-down on the ground. Every closed blind is a relief. He blinks into the light like a creature from below and visibly relaxes when another room is cast in shadow and darkness.

He shuts out the outside world from his tomb, creating blackness in room after room like a magician preparing for the one grand show.

Already that effort is exhausting to his body in an unusual way. Back in the bedroom, rolling down the last blinds, he’s panting and sways with dizziness. Hunger is nesting in his throat like a vile creature. He wants to lie down, hide from the day outside, fatigue pulling heavy at his bones. He seems to be perpetually tired and decides to give his body what it wants for now.

He grabs the second blanket from the bed and settles in that familiar nook by the wall again, curling together against the side of the bed and pulling the blanket all over his body. He’s barely closed his eyes when sleep already drags him under.

He woke to Elena’s warm breath against his neck and a hand slowly crawling down his stomach. His sleepy brain needed another second to make sense of all the input and fill in the whos and whats and whens, but his body was already wide awake. Humming, he turned his head in search for her lips at his ear. Their mouths met in a lazy dance while his hand came up to cradle her head and draw her in. A low rumble vibrating in his chest when her fingers slipped past the waistband of his shorts and started massaging the inside of his thighs, carefully dancing around his cock, slowly awakening and showing interest in what was going on.

He smiled into the kiss and she started grinning, too, until they were both giggling like kids staying awake at night and hiding under the blanket with a flashlight.

“A little sleepy down there, are we?” she mumbled against his mouth as her hand found him only half-awake.

He snorted and rolled his hips lazily into her hand, fingers curling into her hair.

“Give me a little credit here. It’s the middle of the night.”

They both started laughing again, but that laughter soon merged into something rather needy while she stroked him awake and his breath became laboured.

He went quiet and looked at her, smile faltering slowly, breath falling from parted lips and ghosting across her skin so close to his, thrown back at him, mingling between their faces. He swallowed, brushed her hair back behind her ears, stroked his thumbs over her cheekbones and down to her lips.

“I love you,” he said quietly and she smiled at him, changing her angle and drawing a moan from him.

“I can see that,” she said, cocking an eyebrow.

He growled and came up to kiss her again, pulling her on his lap, and she framed his face with her hands and tilted his head back to deepen the kiss, rolling her hips down against him, easily turning his hushed laughter into soft moans. He pushed his hands under her nightshirt where it had hitched up over her hips and pushed it higher until she had to raise her arms and break the kiss for him to pull it over her head and send it flying into a dark corner.

He dipped his head low to catch a nipple between his lips, flicking his tongue over it and making her ground down into him with a moan, hands gripping his shoulders and stroking down his back, palms brushing over his skin and fingers digging into the muscle there. She kissed the top of his head, then brought her hands back up to push his chin up, pressing their foreheads together.

“So how about you show me just how much you love me?” she panted with a grin and he snorted at that cliché, giving her his best seducing gaze, aided by how sleepy he still felt.

“I guess I can do that.”

He brushed his lips against hers.

“But first…”

Gently tugged at her lower lip with his teeth.

“…I need to get out of these.”

And he playfully pushed his hips into her, getting her to brace herself on her knees and his shoulders to give him room to get his shorts off. While he lifted his hips and tried to slide the shorts down, she started nibbling at his ear, moving down to the side of his neck.

He couldn’t help but moan and close his eyes at the sensation sending goosebumps all over his body while he struggled with the shorts tangling between his legs.

“You’re not exactly helping.”

She hummed, more than a little satisfied he thought, and tilted his head back to gently bite at his throat just when he managed to push his shorts off with one foot. She came down to him again, skin on bare skin, and found that perfect spot, rubbing herself against him with teasing, slow strokes, keeping up the friction with frustratingly bittersweet rolls of her hips.

His breathing became uneven and he clutched at her hips, pulling her down to him, dropping his head low.

“I thought you wanted me to show you…”

He moaned into her shoulder.

“Because if you keep that up…”

“Hmhm.”

She lifted her hips and reached down to position him at just the right angle. There was this grin tugging at her lips that he found endlessly enticing when she pulled back a little to look at his face.

“Maybe another time.”

She sank down on him and he groaned, closed his eyes and let his head roll back. His hands splayed against her back to steady her while she braced her hands against his shoulders. Slick heat and sweet pressure and he couldn’t stop moaning until she was flush against him. He cradled her in his arms and pressed himself against her, her against him, drawing up and widening his legs just that little bit to get the perfect angle.

She slowly started rocking against him and he pressed kisses against her collarbone and between her breasts.

She rolled her hips with sweet friction and he moaned endearments against her skin.

She braced herself against him, picking up pace, breathes becoming ragged between them, and she tangled her fingers in his hair, pulling his lips up into a heated kiss.

She moved and he couldn’t stop moaning, rocked up into her, trying to find that perfect rhythm aligned with the dance of her hips and pelvis, her body like the molten sun in his arms, so hot and radiant and _perfect_ he just wanted to get close and burn to ashes against her blazing skin.

“I love you.”

He moaned between kisses, thighs trembling with exertion.

“I love you.”

Again and again, reverent, caught between a whisper and a moan, and she started to moan with him, her movements becoming erratic while she worked herself against him.

She broke the heated drag of tongues and lips to curl her fingers into his hair again, tugging gently. Strands of dark hair tickled his cheeks.

“Look at me.”

He opens his eyes, wakes with a start, surrounded by darkness, starts moving, untangling his limbs from the blanket draped all around his body, and feels a familiar weight between his legs. Arousal spikes through him and in his sleep-addled confusion he reaches down, presses the heel of his hand over the fabric where his hard cock strains against his pants, presses himself into his palm.

He stops fighting the blanket and rolls over, half lying on his stomach, and presses his face down, moaning and rolling his hips. He’s panting hard, hot breath getting caught where he presses his nose into the soft ground. His stomach is a tight knot of heat, tugging at nerves and veins radiating into his groin and thighs, and he’s so painfully hard he thinks he’s going to burst. The friction of the fabric rubbing over him where he presses himself down into his own hand is so intense he can’t even pause to open his pants. He’s rolling his hips into his hand and the ground, added by his own weight bearing down, and moans at the sensation, curling his fingers over the outline of his cock, gripping down hard.

It’s when the movement of his hips becomes frantic he realises he’s lying on the hard ground.

It’s when his panting grows into hot, laboured moans he recognises the carpet he’s pressing his face into.

It’s when his hand is stroking his cock through the fabric with relentless pace he understands why he’s sleeping in his dress pants.

He tries to stop but can’t keep his hips from gyrating for the last blissful strokes to take him over the edge, can’t keep his hand from gripping down, meeting friction with pressure. He can’t stop, hips stuttering in unbroken frenzy, a loud moan drawn from his chest, hand rubbing over his cock in hectic, wild strokes. His body takes over. He’s trembling with exertion, pressing his hips down, fucking into his hand.

It’s when her name tumbles over his lips the moment he tumbles over the edge his reality washes over him together with an orgasm so intense his world bursts up in flames.

He cries out, his body pulsing with heat like a fever washing over him, rolling through him, scorching him.

He tears his fingers away, pushes himself up on hands and knees, but his body keeps going, that split second too late, pelvis jerking forward, and he’s spilling in his pants, hips rolling on their own accord, trying to find more friction. His hands curl into fists against the carpet. He’s groaning, shaking with the intensity, rocking forward and down, trying to find _anything_. The missing pressure makes the heat only more unbearable where he’s kneeling on the floor, knees open and legs splayed wide. He’s lost all control over his being, his body crashing him down into bliss and heat and _need_.

His groan breaks into a sob, hips rolling forward, riding out the last waves of his climax in long, languid strokes, and he can’t even stop that. Breath hitching in agonising gasps in his throat. Arms and legs trembling. A shudder washes through his body head to toe. And the world crashes back into place around him, the cold air of the empty room beating down on the sweat clinging to his skin, the heat on his cheeks and neck, burning bright with shame and lust and disgust.

He feels his stomach contract and moans with nausea, dips his head low and throws up nothing but bile and that small gulp of water. He retches on the ground, stomach cramping in excruciating pain, sending sharp stabs up to his chest. He tries to pant through it, dragging in painful breaths, tears welling up with exhaustion and shame. His whole body is shuddering so hard he can barely hold himself upright while wave after wave of cold sweat and hot fever crashes through him.

Gathering whatever is left in his broken body and fractured soul, he pushes himself back and collapses against the side of the bed, head swirling with dizziness. He kicks the blanket away and pushes his trembling legs against the wall, lets his head drop back against the bed, wooden frame digging into his shoulders, the gun into his back. Tears are streaking down his cheeks, mix with the sweat and roll down his throat while he moans with all the ways his body and mind hurts, the way his heart aches, trying to mangle itself in his chest. The way his groin still pulses with bliss and sensuality.

He gags and moans, presses the back of his bandaged hand against his mouth, swallows hard to quench that sickening feeling before it can roll his body into another wave of retching. He bites down hard on his fingers until he draws blood, until he feels the sharp pain wash out the nausea and throbbing of his soft cock, until he tastes something else in his mouth than the salty bite of sweat in the air, until the smell of copper is stronger than the smell of vomit and arousal.

Eyes screwed shut tightly, he tries to concentrate on the pain and only on that. When the sickness slowly fades, his body relaxes, too, relieving the tension pulling every muscle in his body, and he slumps down a little more, trapped in the nook between bed and wall.

Shame flares bright in his chest, oscillating between disgust and guilt. Disgust at what he’s done. Guilt at dragging her into this, forever staining every memory of intimacy.

He looks at his hand in the dark but sees only black patches on white, his blood soaking the dressing. He licks his teeth and lips, trying to wash away the taste. He’s so dizzy, even the smallest movement of his head makes the room spin and he needs to press his eyes closed again. His head is pounding, the lack of water hitting his body head-on. He’s trying to swallow against his dry, raw throat.

He knows he needs to get up, but the thought alone makes him sick again. All his brain does is tell him to lie down and sleep, sleep until it’s over. Sleep until you’re better. But he knows he needs to get up and drink or he might never get up again because the rest of his body is screaming at him in wild panic, clawing at him from the inside. Get up. Get up now.

Has it been four days? Five? Three?

All he wants is to give in, lie down, curl up in the mess he’s made and sleep. Wouldn’t that be the easier way? Wasn’t that why he had come back into this room in the first place?

But he knows if he gives in to that pull of fatigue now, he might not find the strength to get up again next time. So he slowly pushes himself up and stands, hands and head pressed against the wall for support. His harsh breath is hitting the wallpaper and he imagines it to mist up like glass. A fingerprint of that tiny raw thing living inside these walls, desperately clawing at life without knowing why, like a rat in a laboratory.

He’s disgusted with himself, feels betrayed by his own body. He doesn’t want to think about the way his clothes stick to his skin with sweat and his own semen. He’s never felt so miserable in his entire life.

And he sneers at that wallow of self-pity, but it feels like there will never be a happy day in his life ever again.

There is no light left.

He pushes himself off the wall and stumbles through the room. Everything’s spinning around him and his head is pounding so hard he can barely keep his eyes open. He manages to grab fresh underwear from the wardrobe, the smell of fresh clothes neatly folded in stacks almost sending his senses into overdrive again.

He stops at the bedroom door for a moment, trying to catch up with his racing heart, bloody hand gripping the door frame tightly. Then he closes the door and moves over to the bathroom. He knows he won’t step back into this room ever again.

His shoes by the door, neatly parked next to each other, remain like an eternal warning sign.

He pads around in the dark bathroom on cool tiles, bends over the sink with slumped shoulders and opens the tap to have cold water run over his wrists, soaking the dressing wrapped around his hands. He watches yet another swirl of dark red wash down the drain, then cups his hands and splashes icy water into his face, bends down to let it wash all over his neck and the back of his head, soaking his hair and shirt around the shoulders, washing the sweat away. It helps with the nausea and the way his face feels like it’s burning up.

He stays like that until he feels the freezing cold water numb his skin, very slowly easing off the tension there. He breathes through his open mouth, focusing on the way the water spills from his nose and lips and chin, dragging his tongue over his lips to catch the liquid there.

After a while, he comes up again to drink from cupped hands, small sips, long pauses, trying to take it slow and not overwhelm his stomach again.

His body itches to get into the shower and clean off everything, just stand there and let the hot water soak his skin, but he feels weak with trembling legs and shaking hands. Feels like he doesn’t deserve this, too.

So he dries his face and hands, towels off his hair and catches an inadvertent glimpse at himself in the mirror. In the darkness of the room, his face looms like a pale patch, dark hollows for his eyes, the stubble of his beard a shadow around his mouth and against his cheeks.

He doesn’t linger, strips out of his pants instead to shed the messed-up underwear and soak a cloth with warm water, the only convenience he’s willing to allow himself. Unable to be gentle with his body, unable to cope with his own desires and longing, he cleans himself only because the alternative would be even worse.

He can’t say why he puts his dress pants on over the clean underwear again, doesn’t linger on that either. Nothing makes sense to him anymore and all that he can manage right now is to follow the most primal needs his body dictates.

Drink.

Eat.

Sleep.

Of which he has done one, but he still feels sick with hunger, and his body, in its exhaustion, finally decides to take over and drag him downstairs again. This time, he picks up the book lying upturned on the uppermost step. Matilda. He smooths down the bent pages before he closes it, then puts it down on the side table next to the couch.

He pads around the dark patch on the carpet and lingers in front of the fridge, a hand on the handle. There are dirty dishes in the sink, a used glass on the counter. He lingers and looks, but can’t bring himself to put everything into the dishwasher.

He’d give everything to hear Elena mutter about how putting the glass on the counter does not even take that much less energy than putting it right into the dishwasher. Or about him leaving his shoes under the shoe rack instead of on it. About him stepping over the trash bag outside the door because he’s in a hurry and can’t take that extra second to throw it into the container.

He’d give everything. He’d do everything, all of that. All she’s ever wanted him to do.

But there’s this ache crawling up his chest again and the moment is lost. He opens the fridge door. The familiar act feels alien to him now, the light coming from inside is like a shock in his eternal night, something ridiculously normal in a world that stopped being exactly that for him, blinding his eyes, unaccustomed to light now, trapping him in the spotlight like headlights would a deer in the night.

He gawks at the sheer abundance of food in the fridge and feels like he’s just broken into someone else’s home. It’s so surreal, all those colours in blinding light. All that choice.

He grabs some cheese and dried mango, a carton of orange juice, closes the door and is left in total darkness again. He’s grateful for that because he knows he will have to turn around and walk past the shards and the books and the blood on the floor again.

Momentarily blind, he feels around to find his way to the couch. Sitting down on the side he knows is not smeared with blood, he stares into the dark to find enough light bouncing back from objects to his eyes. His ears strain to listen, but there’s only the low hum of the fridge behind him. It must be night outside, too. There’s no sound coming in from the streets.

He unwraps the mango slices and starts to methodically put food into his mouth. Chew very slowly, swallow, repeat. His body tries to shrink away from it, just the smell and taste already too much while his stomach screams at him for _more_ , and yet he can’t eat much, feels full already after a couple of bites. So he drops the food on the table, far away from him, takes a sip of juice and sinks back into the couch.

His eyes have adjusted to the darkness again and he looks down at the dried puddle of blood next to him. He stretches his hand out, palm flat, hovering above the stain. He tries not to, but his brain comes up with all the scenarios that could fit to this image anyway and, as a form of self-chastening maybe, he concentrates on those instead.

During the past ten years, he’s handled more than enough cases about cartel violence, about revenge, warnings, assassinations. Plata o plomo. People coming home to find exactly what he found. Broken bodies and blood. He’s been on the other side so many times, walking through houses while those that remain behind are staying with relatives or in hospitals, just another stranger to invade their home.

The fabric is coarse when he touches it, fingertips spreading against long-dried blood.

All the ways to violate a body, all the ways to hurt while they are still alive, to mutilate when they are dead.

He pulls his hand away, leans forward and drags it over his face, palm covering his mouth while his brain supplies him with a multitude of crime scene photos, bodies and body parts, faces frozen in terror, faces without eyes, bodies without breasts, without genitals, without heads, arms, legs. Bodies too small to be allowed to ever witness such violence.

Words cut into flesh, initials burned into skin.

Crime scenes, morgues, photos to freeze all that for eternity. Look at all the rage boiling in the blood of humanity.

And he thought he could stop that, single-handedly turn the tide, make them pay, adhere to law and atone for all the grief their actions have caused. When really he has done nothing.

Because what has he ever achieved? Compensation for those who have lost their families and friends? What help is that? And how do you compensate the dead?

How would it help him, knowing that those who have taken everything from him would sit behind bars, their place just taken by someone else the next day?

How would any of that compensate his wife and daughter for all the years they have lost?

He stands because he can’t bear to sit anymore, uneasiness sloshing in his stomach. He starts pacing through the room, restless and angry, at himself, them, society, the government.

It takes a couple of turns for him to recognise the way his stomach cramps and his throat tightens, the bitter taste at the back of his tongue. He bolts into the bathroom, feet skidding over broken glass, and throws up what little he had just eaten.

So much for food.

He heaves and shudders, waiting for his system to get out what it wasn’t prepared to digest anyway, for his body to calm down again. He spits sour bile and punches his fist against the toilet tank in frustration, then flushes and sinks back against the wall, wiping at his mouth.

No food then. Stick to drinking for now.

And that makes his brain light up.

He takes a couple of panted breaths, then pushes himself up against the wall, forces his body to move back to the living room and to the wooden cabinet there, next to the bar counter top dividing the kitchen from the dining area. He opens it and it’s right there, that abundance of anaesthetics.

Madeira, Brandy, Sake, Gin, Cachaça, Mezcal, Whisky.

There’s more in the basement, mostly wine, but he figures that would do it for now.

For starters, he grabs the neck of the single malt and a glass from the top shelf and sits down at the counter on one of the bar stools with the single purpose of getting as drunk as possible. He’s way beyond caring what that does to his system. He just has to be careful enough not to throw up again, take your time, plan it out.

With more determination than he has felt ever since he saw the lights in the sky, he pours himself a shot of whisky and starts to drink.

It doesn’t take long for him to feel the impact, his empty stomach and intestines acting like a sponge, injecting the alcohol into his bloodstream and sending it up to his heart and brain. He knows he’s probably pretty dehydrated by now, generally in no good condition, and he’s very aware that this is seriously not a good idea. But what does that even matter? He just tries to take it slow, delay every sip, keep it inside. The time passing between every gulp is an ordeal, but he doesn’t want to start over again because he drove his body into shock.

It’s funny, actually. He’s never had the chance to watch himself slowly slip into intoxication. He’s never had alcohol alone. Getting drunk as a teenager was loud and messy and usually ended way earlier than intended. Getting drunk as an adult was almost always a planned thing, working off stress after a successful case, letting loose, already high on adrenaline and lack of sleep.

He drowns out his emotions with alcohol now and he monitors the stages he’s pushing himself through.

There’s the initial stage of tipsy euphoria, warmth blooming in his chest and stomach, hands and feet heating up, face flushed. He takes stock of all the ways his body hurts and feels the pain becoming subdued. Things start to get a little lighter on his shoulder, head a little higher. He usually ends up getting all chatty and flirtatious at that stage, but with no one there to talk to, he sits very patiently, watching himself go down that hole with open eyes.

He laments the absence of clocks now that he can’t take an accurate measure of time for how long it takes him to get from one stage to the next, but he’s past being tipsy after a while and feels himself become unstable, rolling with the emotions. He tries to clamp down on them first, closes his eyes and swallows against the way his heart clenches and his chest aches, but he knows he can’t stop the memories from bubbling up again.

Only this time, they are not the good ones.

He thinks about Elena’s voice on the phone when he told her he won’t make it on time. He remembers the silence while he imagined her looking over to Sofia trying to think about how to tell her. He can see the face Sofia makes at finding out he’ll be late again.

He thinks about the last time he and Elena had fought. He remembers that it was late at night and how loud they’d become, how they tried to whisper with heated words, looking up at the ceiling to where Sofia slept, both aware of the absurdity of their behaviour but too embarrassed at the thought their daughter might notice. Even worse, he doesn’t even remember why they fought.

He remembers all the not nows and laters, all the maybe tomorrow honeys adding up to never. All the promises he’s made and couldn’t keep, the promise to be early, the promise to be home for the weekend, the promise to take her there, repair this, get that on his way back. The promise to spend time. The promise to be there.

All those moments lost now. And he would never get them back. He would never get a second chance. He wouldn’t even be allowed to apologise.

Tears are streaming down his face again and he can tolerate them only because he accepts them as his road to numbness.

It’s getting harder to refill the glass. His hand drags behind, clumsily grabbing at thin air, hitting the bottle with the back of his hand. He’s sure he’s spilt some of the whisky, but it takes some time to spot the drops on the counter top. He drags his finger through them, watching them dance on the wooden surface, thinking about blood.

He’s pretty sure that if he tried to stand right now he’d probably just fall over. He feels heavy on the bar stool, unmovable, arms draped over the counter. He presses his eyes closed and blinks, trying to get his focus right again.

Doesn’t work.

He wonders if they made sure he wasn’t at home first, if they had watched them for days, weeks, had watched him, trying to get his routine. He wonders what they would have done if he’d been home. If he’d come home early. If he’d kept his promise.

Maybe they would have let him die together with them. He would have certainly begged them to.

The Glock is on the counter. He spins it around on the wooden surface, finger through the trigger guard, inadvertently knocks the glass off the counter top. He winces at the loud thud it makes hitting the floor, adding whisky to all the blood on the carpet.

He feels sick again, but breathes through it until it’s gone.

And well, the bottle’s just as good as the glass, he figures, and puts it to his lips.

He’s getting frustrated with the way he can still _feel_ so fucking much. He slams the bottle on the counter and groans through gritted teeth, head coming down to touch the warm wooden surface.

“Just let me go. Please, just let me go.”

He jerks up his head, trying to figure out who has spoken. A gush of pain and dizziness sloshes through his brain at the sudden movement and he slowly realises he had, his voice so very alien. Or maybe he is too drunk already.

He’s on the ground and doesn’t remember how he got there, but his head hurts and when he brings his hand up to touch his temple there’s blood on his fingertips. He feels sick again, leaning against the wooden wall of the counter, and reaches up to bring the bottle down to his mouth, tipping his head back. He tries to drown the nausea with more whisky. Drown it. Just drown it. Burn it like everything else.

He thinks burning the house might actually be a good idea.

He might have thrown up. Or maybe not. He’s not sure but remembers crawling across the floor.

He’s lying on his back, staring up at the grey mass of the ceiling, far, far away in the dark. His chest feels tight and cold sweat is prickling on his skin.

Is this what dying feels like?

He closes his eyes, feels like he’s drifting away, leaving his body.

He tears his eyes open because he fears he might crash into the ceiling.

God, he feels so sick.

He curls to the side, a tight ball of agony and misery, and moans into the carpet.

Why does it have to hurt so much?

“Dad?”

He jolts awake with a start.

It takes one second to understand where he is, sitting on the floor of his living room.

It takes another one to realise he has never heard and will never hear his daughter call him dad.

And it takes the last one for the hangover to hit him like a freight train.

He struggles to get up, tries to move and almost stumbles. The way to the bathroom is the longest he’s ever walked. Hand outstretched against the wall to hold himself upright, he presses his teeth together and breathes hard through his nose to control his raging stomach long enough.

The familiar rush for the toilet is like a new routine in his life now.

The acid he throws up burns across his sore throat so intense he wants to scream. He clutches the toilet seat and presses his pounding head against the water tank, wincing in pain and panting against the tremors rolling through his wrecked body, tears of pain and frustration streaking down his cheeks.

It feels like there’s not a single drop of liquid left in his body and he wonders how long it takes to die of dehydration.

That’s when the doorbell rings.

He freezes.

Holds his breath.

It rings again.

He sinks down against the wall as slowly as possible.

He goes over all the potential people to ring that bell, tries to calm himself with the idea it might be someone completely unrelated. The mailman. A solicitor. Someone lost. But he’s sure it’s someone he knows. His family. Elena’s. They would probably call first.

Neighbours. Crawling out after enough time has passed to digest the shock of flashing blue lights at night. Look what’s left. Who is.

But maybe it’s still family. Or friends. He has no idea how much time has passed, if it’s been all over the news or held down.

The doorbell rings again and he flinches.

_Just go away. Go away._

He can’t even stand the thought of having to see anyone, let alone someone he knows. The look in their eyes. The words expected of him. How should he explain? How should he ever explain to her mom? Her dad? Should he show them the dark rooms he’s been hiding in, their daughter’s and granddaughter’s blood everywhere?

How could he ever explain why he’s staying, why he needs to stay here?

Because he can’t come with them. He can’t. He can’t have them care for him. He can’t care for _them_. The thought alone is such an absurdity. People would expect him to move on eventually when all he sees is the body of his wife. And the head is missing.

The bell rings again. Once. Twice. Three times.

There’s pounding on the door.

He closes his eyes, presses his teeth together.

_Go away go away go away._

_“Alejandro?”_

_God, please._

His arms come up to cover his head. It’s a male voice and it’s not alone, but that’s all he can make out. The rest is muffled through the door. Could be anyone. Could be his father. He presses the back of his head against the tiled wall and waits for them to go.

He jerks awake when his head lolls to the side. The dull drone is still there behind his eyes. He still feels sick. His body craves water like oxygen.

He listens. There is no bell.

He starts pushing his body up, pulls himself up with his hands on the sink. The movement alone sends him down to his knees again with nausea and dizziness, retching into the toilet although there’s nothing his body could give anymore. Tears mingling with sweat and he doesn’t understand where that is even coming from. His body feels like a wasteland.

He makes another attempt for the sink and manages to stand, if not steady, but he stands. His legs feel non-existent. The dried blood is still there all over the sink and against the tiles. He opens the tap and fills his cupped hands with cold water but pauses. He needs to get that water into his system, but he’s absolutely positive he’ll just throw it up again when he drinks like he wants to. Dragging his tongue across his dry lips, he watches the water trickle through his fingers.

There’s a twisted kind of fear tugging at his heart now, a disturbing alarm rolling through him at the deteriorating state his body is caught in, the sudden awareness that he could actually die here, that he might pass out that one last time and not get up again. There’s absolutely no sense in clawing at life anymore, but some wretched little thing inside him doesn’t want to die. Or rather, fears death. Is too afraid to die.

He opens his hands, lets the water run over his bandaged palms and bends down to lick it off his fingers. He wants so much more but brings himself to step away after just a few small sips. He takes another washing cloth from the shelf and soaks it in cold water because he doesn’t trust himself to keep it slow.

Sucking on the soaked cloth, he pads through the door, leaving the jingling of shards behind. It takes him forever to get across the hallway and to his study. The walls are caving in on him, cold sweat prickling all over his skin. Mustering the willpower to get himself to leave the double door frame again and stumble to the small couch in what has once been his home office is like running a marathon against his own brain.

Don’t lie down here. Go over there. You can sleep there. Don’t stop now.

He all but tumbles down onto the couch, grabs the blanket there and drags it over himself with what feels like a last surge of strength. He’s so cold, his body shivering with utter exhaustion.

This is the first time he doesn’t sleep on the ground.

A bizarre thought tumbling through his mind.

But he keeps the wet cloth near his lips.

The shrill ringing of his phone jerks his body into existence. He feels like he just fell asleep. He’s sitting on the small couch in his study, staring at the screaming thing on his table across the room like it’s about to jump at him. His skin is hot, sweaty, shivering with fever.

Too cold and too hot. Nothing in between anymore.

His immediate thought is that it might be Tuesday now and he’s not where he’s supposed to be. _Where the fuck are you?!_ Myriads of small details flood his brain, all his preparations for the case, all the things he’s had no time to prepare over the weekend, the fact that he’s not going to make it in time because the flight to Juárez is a little over four hours.

Then he almost snorts, hysterical laughter bubbling up in his chest at the thought of him standing there with a nice, clean suit, acting as if nothing had happened.

But the shrill ring of the phone drowns the laughter and he moves on unsteady legs, blanket draped around his shoulders, to rip the plug out of the socket and kill the intrusive noise.

The abrupt silence brings the room into focus around him.

Books ripped from his shelves. The drawers of his massive desk open, the locked ones broken, empty, the content scattered on the ground around it, the image of a dead animal turned inside out with splashes of blood everywhere. The floor lamp on the ground like a barricade, a stop sign, _Don’t Enter_ , shade broken. Glass all over the floor. Shards from glass cabinet doors, shards from vases, shards from picture frames, shards from pitchers and glasses, shards from small figurines Sofia had given him. And paper. Paper everywhere. Heaps of white between and all over darker book cases and shattered wood and glittering glass. Notes and texts, handwritten and typed, narratives of death and violence, blood and drugs, money and names, tragedies, lives, numbness. Perforated, sorted, filed. Not anymore.

Orchestrated chaos. And he knows they didn’t search for anything. They didn’t take anything. The brutal precision with which they took this room apart is just another part of the message. _We’re not interested in this. There’s nothing of value here for us. You have no secrets. We’re not afraid of you. We already took what we came to take._

His fingertips wander over the solid wooden surface of the desk he’s spent so many hours at. He keeps his breath shallow, straining to hear something, but there’s no sound coming from the phone in the living room. Just silence. Respite. Then he remembers his cellphone and drags himself into a small panic trying to find it because he’s sure it’ll go off any second now and why didn’t it already?

That’s when he remembers he left it in the car, didn’t take it with him when he got out. It’s still there, together with his documents and keys. And the food. The notebook.

There must be a ton of missed calls and messages on it by now, must have been older calls on this one here, too, before he killed it.

He leaves the room, feet rustling through paper and glass, and walks over to the living room with his head still feeling like an anvil someone keeps pounding on. The phone by the dining area is on the floor, pushed from the windowsill in a long-lost fight. It’s dead, but the charging station flashes wildly with old messages, hanging from its cord. Attempted suicide by rope. He rips that plug, too. One last flash. Gone.

There’s another phone left, though, and he doesn’t want to go there.

The bottle of whisky is still there, beckoning him over from the counter. _Sit down. You don’t need to go into that room. I’ll help you make things easier._ He doesn’t dwell on the fact that there’s only a little more than a third of the liquid in there. He still doesn’t feel right and he’s not about to push his body into another shock. Not right now. But he leaves the bottle there, lid open, dropped glass still on the floor.

The door to Elena’s studio is closed. He’s already been in here. He’s been in every room, closing the shutters and rolling down the blinds, but he didn’t pay attention then, purposefully unaware, the intention to create darkness his only goal. He didn’t look. Now he does.

He’s good at spotting the blood in the dark now. It has a unique texture to it, a different pattern than any other thing in a human house. You’d never mistake it for wallpaper or decoration. It’s splattered all over the large desk by the wall, standing out against the white surface. Red exploding against the edge of the desk, spraying against the wall and onto the floor. Red leading in streaks to where he stands in the doorway, creeping up to him, squeezing past his bare feet and down the hallway to where it comes to rest on the side of the couch.

His heart is picking up a faster beat again, breath going heavy, and he pads to the desk before it tips him over the edge. The phone is speckled with spots of red, too. Flashing, too. He pulls the plug. He must have not heard it while he was upstairs. Or asleep. Or drunk. And he’s grateful now that they had decided right from the start they didn’t want to have a phone on the second floor.

He keeps his gaze off the photos on the desk, immersed in a puddle of dried blood. Instead, his eyes find their way to the door leading to the darkroom. It’s ajar, inviting him in like a gorge that will swallow him whole, the darkest room in this dark house.

He turns around and leaves, closes the door to the studio as quietly as possible.

He’s breathing lighter now he thinks, because of the phones or the door, he’s not sure. With newfound incentive, he grabs the small stool from under the kitchen counter, the one Sofia had used to reach things when she was smaller, and carries it to the front door. He climbs on it and, without wasting another thought, rips out the wires leading to the doorbell.

He almost loses his balance when he gets down again, head filled with cotton, but he feels more at ease knowing he just eliminated all the ways someone could try to get to him. He can’t keep them from knocking, but he shuts the large double doors to the hallway that haven’t been closed since he bought the house and plans to stay in the living room and on the second floor only. Behind those doors, down the hallway, there’s more pain than he can bear right now.

He just hopes the uncertainty that he might actually not be home will keep them from knocking in the front door.

Pleased with his efforts, he sits on the couch again, blanket draped around his body and feet tucked under. He’s getting better at not thinking about anything, but it’s quiet moments like this, where he doesn’t feel the immediate need to scream, cry, throw up or hit anything, where the pounding in his head is drowned out to a background noise, that he watches himself slowly lose his grip on reality.

He knows he’s barricading himself in his own home and he doesn’t know to what purpose. He only knows he can’t deal with anything outside these walls now. He feels like life has lost him somewhere along the way, like a rubber ball fallen from a kid’s pocket. He’s rolled down the sidewalk, bumped down the curb and missed the storm drain straight ahead, suddenly free-falling in total darkness, waiting to hit the ground with both anticipation and fear.

He doesn’t know if the thought that there might not be a ground is more relieving or uncomfortable right now.

There are no thoughts of a tomorrow, no possibility, no space for that in his heart and mind. He can’t fathom how making plans for anything would ever fit in his life again, how getting up, putting on clothes, going to work ever seemed so easy. Taking a shower, brushing your teeth. He can’t even take a piss anymore with the way his body throws up every little bit of liquid he sends down.

He’s also not hungry anymore, which he sees as a good thing. He knows he needs to eat eventually, or finally deal with the consequences, but for now it’s one less thing he has to take care of.

He’s sweaty and shivering at the same time, ice cutting deep into his bones, burning freezing cold against his blazing flesh from inside. He wants to sleep, or drink when he can’t sleep. He wants to drown out all thoughts, forever, but is too much of a fool to end it for good.

He sits in the dark room of his own hollow soul and blinks at walls that smell like ashes.

He doesn’t know if he fell asleep. His sleeps tend to be dreamless now, his body maybe too exhausted to let him remember if he did, granting him blissful nothingness as some sort of sorry excuse. Sometimes he wants to dream, though, to go back to earlier memories, happier times dripping with laughter and sunshine like molasses. He wants to wrap them around himself instead of the blanket that smells like his wife’s skin.

He mostly sleeps now throughout the day, wandering the house at night without ever turning on the lights. If he would go blind now, he wouldn’t struggle with finding his way around.

He can distinguish night and day simply by the way the noise outside filters in through the walls and closed blinds. More noise during the day. Cars driving by, vans heavy and droning, motorbikes light and screaming. He hates trailers just for the way they rattle across the street. Lawnmowers. Barking dogs. Bike bells. Voices, too, if they are loud. Shouting. Laughter. He thinks he hears people banging at his door, calling his name, but maybe those are all dreams.

He loathes the days. They are too loud. That’s why he sleeps, adjusting his rhythm to this new reality, the sounds of those outside waking around him his alarm clock to curl up and sleep.

The nights are better, almost silent. The rare noise coming in, a late car, drunk friends, the wail of a cat, startles him. First, he flinches at every sound. Later, he covers his head and presses into tight corners until it’s gone.

After a while, he can’t stand the noise anymore. That’s when he starts looking for it, tearing plugs from sockets, killing the fridge and TV, the radio and everything that hums and buzzes in standby. He wraps a towel around the leaking tap in the kitchen. Had meant to fix that anyway. _Later, honey, okay? Just let me finish this._

He’s sitting in near silence now, wondering if this has been his daughter’s world.

He finds he’s still irritated by all the lights he has not yet extinguished, like it’s affecting his ability to not hear. So he shoves towels under the living room doors and tissues into keyholes. He takes down pictures and mirrors, catching the barest of light and reflecting it back at him. He drapes sheets over cupboards with glass fronts, hides lamp shades and metal handles, muffling this world of sound and light. He pulls out all the remaining plugs in the house, including the basement, just to get rid of all the small red standby lights staring at him.

He’s in a vacuum.

He doesn’t want anything alive with him in this house, creating a bubble filled with grief and agony, bloody feet and bloody hands, wading through shards of pain and puddles of numbness, shattering what isn’t already broken, spiraling down into bottomless rage so intense he feels like burning up from inside.

The only sounds he can stand are his own. His wailing in the dark. Silent tears and loud sobbing, writhing on the ground. Tormented screams, furious, haunting the house at night. In between, he’s perfected the art of barely making any noise at all. He’s become his very own ghost.

His periods of sleep are getting longer, more frequent. Sometimes he thinks he’s missed a night. Sometimes he wakes during the day and finds himself increasingly disoriented for long minutes. Sometimes he wakes and feels like he’s only been asleep for half an hour but he’s sure it’s already the next night. He slowly loses any grip on rhythm and time spans. All the things are tumbling into each other, merging, transitioning, waves of clarity surging up and falling down again, peaks of emotions, vales of stupor, filtering out into sameness. Grey. Equilibrium.

He rarely eats. Crisp bread. Crackers. A slice of dried fruit. He tried eating cold canned soup once, made it through half the plate before his body decided it didn’t know what to do with this.

Water stays inside now, most of the time. And he’s getting better at handling the alcohol.

He drinks when he can’t find his way into sleep alone. He drinks when he doesn’t want to be awake at night. He drinks when he’s hungry or thirsty. He drinks when he can’t bear the pain.

He tried not drinking for a night. He’s not about to try that again.

Sometimes, he’s not sure how he ended up at a certain place.

Sometimes, he passes out right where he stands.

Sometimes, he beats his fists against the wall so hard he needs to find new bandages in the bathroom.

He always sleeps on the floor.

He thinks about Sofia upstairs, reading _Matilda_. She doesn’t hear the screams downstairs.

He thinks about sitting by her cradle that one night when she’s been so ill he worried she might just stop breathing all of a sudden. He woke with a start when he almost fell out of the chair and brushed the short curls of dark hair from her feverish skin.

He thinks about how angry he was when she ran away, hands dancing in furious beats, louder than yelling, then stopping altogether as she pushed him away and turned around.

Sometimes, he wakes up hard. He can’t remember the dreams, just a hot haze. He doesn’t touch himself and waits for it to pass, getting increasingly frustrated with the way his body wants to function like nothing has changed.

One time, he wakes, feeling hot and pulsing, and he rises, naked under the blanket because he’s been in such a fever he couldn’t stand to have his clothes touch his skin anymore. Wetness sticking to his stomach and softening cock, a wet spot on the ground. He drowns himself in alcohol that night and ends up on the bathroom floor in a heap of sweat and blood and misery.

Once, he takes himself in hand. He can’t say if it’s because he’s too drunk or not drunk enough, if this is some form of self-punishment or if he’s just incredibly lonely. He’s even more ashamed by how quickly everything is over than by the fact that he couldn’t stop the memories from floating back once he started.

He’s found the clothes. They were bundled up behind the armchair, not hidden, just thrown into the corner at an angle he couldn’t see from the couch. He stares at them and wants to turn away, but their presence burns even more intense than all the blood and shards together. He gets down on his knees and touches a pale piece of fabric. A shirt he knows Elena liked to wear around the house, large and worn and comfortable. He picks it up and it’s bloody and torn and he can’t. He just can’t.

He clutches the shredded shirt in his fists and weeps and moans on his knees like they have been taken from him a second time.

That’s when the dreams started.

He would wake with a start, covered in sweat, disoriented and with the frantic beat of his heart against his ribs. Sometimes, he’d lash out reflexively, hitting thin air or whatever is in his way. Sometimes, he’d freeze in horror.

He would see every variant of what might or might not have happened, some more frequent than others, sometimes in this house, sometimes in a different location. At work. Sophia’s school. A friend’s house. The supermarket. In the street. Any place he’s ever visited.

Sometimes, they are still alive and he’s a witness. Sometimes, he’s kneeling and they watch him die. Sometimes, there’s nothing left but ashes. Sometimes, they’d hang from ropes, bodies swinging like a pendulum and he can’t see where it’s attached.

He’d see them in an open grave with the dead bodies of all the victims he’s ever seen.

He’d see them dead, watching him from the gallery in court.

Or standing beside his bed when he wakes, with his gun in hand.

Sometimes, he has the gun, but his hands are dripping with blood.

He’s afraid to sleep now. And he drinks to numb his thoughts. He’d still dream then, but he doesn’t need to watch himself slowly fall asleep, clawing desperately at the waking world while dreaded fatigue pulls at him with bleeding nails, drowning him in thick, heavy cotton wool so no one can hear him scream.

There’s ghosts now.

A key turning in the lock of the front door. Feet whispering through the hallway, but he knows they are bloody. He knows if he goes to open the living room doors now, they would vanish. So he leaves them, caught in that corridor like a fly between the glass and the bug screen. An eternal state of half-existence.

They come in anyway.

He can feel their hands touching his shoulder when he sits on the couch with his back to the room. He can hear his daughter’s feet running through the corridor above his head. He can feel his wife caressing his face and he holds his breath, but when he blinks she’s gone and he cries silently, not moving, hoping she’d come back so he could ask her to kiss him.

At some point, the house stops being his house.

He’s losing any relation to time and space and existence, vibrating between alcohol-induced numbness and restless sleeps of pure physical exhaustion like a flame threatening to flicker out with the slightest breeze.

He doesn’t recognize the rooms he’s in anymore.

And there is something else with him.

Something he doesn’t want to look at.

It’s sitting in the darkest corner of the room, the one he needs to walk up to in order to see what’s there.

But his whole body bristles at the thought of that, physically preventing him from stepping close, flaring up with pure terror, sending his heart into overdrive and pumping adrenaline through his body.

He can’t sit where he can’t see it, unable to keep his back towards it for more than a few heartbeats.

He can’t look at it either, like a black hole deflecting his gaze when he tries.

Sometimes, when he forgets about it, he can hear it breathe down his neck or rush at him with rapid thuds until he whirls around and it’s gone.

It knows his name, though.

Alejandro.

He curls up in corners, trying to hide, but every time he closes his eyes it feels like it’s inside him now.

He covers his ears because he doesn’t want to hear it call him anymore and hears it inside his head instead, saying his name with so much affection he wants to throw up.

He takes his hands away and the voice is outside.

He opens his eyes and it’s back in the corner.

He thinks he doesn’t sleep anymore.

Perpetually awake with his body half-turned to the corner, keeping it in the periphery of his vision, waiting for something to happen or everything to end.

Is it weeks now? Or months? Does he spend years hiding from his nightmares? Or did he live lives full of terror and blood?

They flicker by.

Brightly.

Burning up in flames against the sun.

Death.

An endless row of mute faces.

Soft hair and soft skin and soft voices.

He wants to sink down.

Down.

To where he can rest.

Make me numb.

Make me feel.

Let me sleep.

Wake me up.

Make me forget.

Make me remember.

Alejandro.

He opens his eyes.

He can look at it now.

The Thing.

It’s kneeling on the floor of his daughter’s room, doubled over, moaning and rocking back and forth.

It’s not that terrifying now that he can see it.

He feels pity.

Wants to touch it but doesn’t dare.

It looks up at him and he sees it has his face.

He blinks.

And he’s kneeling on the floor.

It hurts.

Everything hurts.

There’s not a single cell in his body that doesn’t exude pain.

He feels like he’s suffocating on agony.

The gun is in his hand and he crawls over to the windows, every move a lifetime. He sags against the wall and looks down at his lap. His hands are bloody again. The Glock is slippery with red. Was it just a day ago that he stood in his bedroom and couldn’t blow his brains out? He weighs it in his palm.

He feels like he’s leaking. Tears and blood and sweat. He can’t stand it. He’s never felt so much disgust at anything before in his life like he feels for his body right now.

He can’t leave this house. Can’t stay either.

Can’t leave this body. Can’t stay.

The ghosts are climbing the stairs and he’s not afraid of anything anymore.

Let them come. All of them. Take me with you.

He releases the safety, pulls back the slide and presses the muzzle against his temple. Better luck next time. Roll the dice again.

He looks at the bed where his daughter is sitting and watching him, a big grin on her face. Her hands come up, dancing in a song of words.

_Tell me a story?_

He smiles and nods, tears spilling over.

_Okay._

He closes his eyes and swallows.

_It’s okay now._

His finger presses against the trigger.

“Now that would be a really dumb move.”

He opens his eyes.

He’s not alone anymore.

There’s a shadow in this room with him.

And it’s not one of his.

It’s standing in the open door, black against the grey background. And his brain takes a beat to process what’s off about this. He takes the gun down.

“You’re American.”

His voice breaks on the last word, shot and used only to unintelligible screams now, draping around English syllables like a heavy weight on his tongue.

“I’m not one of them, if that’s what you’re asking.”

A drawl. Easy. Lazy.

“I know you’re not one of them. They would not come back to kill me even if I asked them to.”

It’s the foreign language that rips him out of it, sharpening his surroundings like he’s coming up for air. This ghost demanding his attention in a way that makes him aware of the pain in his body, and his breath falls into a shallow rhythm.

“Well, I’m not here to kill you either.”

It’s walking into the room with a carelessness that makes him snarl, crashing into his existence like a stone punching ripples into a lake. It’s close and he wants to lift the gun but doesn’t, held back by the shadow still stepping closer, crowding him like a wall, and he wants to scream.

It crouches in front of him and its face bursts into frame. A man. Young. Rugged. Sharp. Stubble. A t-shirt. A glint.

He’s so close Alejandro feels like he’s burning up.

A half-smile tugging at the man’s lips.

“But I can help you make them want to kill you.”


End file.
